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A DAY-BOOK FOR LENT 



WYLLYS REDE, D.D. 

ii 



"<2t>ery man tfyat strtoetfy for i^e 
mastery is temperate in all things," 




NEW YORK 
LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 

LONDON AND BOMBAY 
1896 



A 



-s^V 



Copyright, 1896 

BY 

Longmans, Green, and Co. 



The Library 
of Congress 



WASHINGTON 



THE CAXTON PRESS 

NEW YORK 



vir PREFACE. 

> 

*%. These meditations were made with my people 
at the close of Evensong, day by day, last Lent. 
They are now put into print with the hope that 
two classes of people may welcome them. 

i. Hard-worked parish priests, who find no 
time for the preparation of such a series year 
by year, and yet desire to help their people to 
draw nigh to God in the practice of devout 
meditation during Lent. 

2. Devout Christians, who are accustomed to 
spend some part of each day in Lent in spiritual 
reading, and many of whom are deprived of 
Church privileges. The number of such earnest 
souls is increasing every year. 

It has proved impossible, amidst the busy 
activities of parish life, to revise as carefully as 
I might have wished, the work which was struck 
off under pressure day by day. But perhaps 
after all it is best that the meditations should 
retain the simple and sometimes fragmentary 
forms into which they first shaped themselves, 
rather than the more symmetrical outlines 
which a colder criticism might have given 
them. Traces may be found in them of " books 



vi Preface. 

which have influenced me," but it is manifestly 
impossible to give credit in detail to the authors 
from whom in the heat of hasty preparation 
suggestions were received. My only motive in 
giving to the world this book, of whose imper- 
fections I am painfully well aware, is to encour- 
age some souls to renew the spiritual combat, 
and fight it to the end. 

Wyllys Rede. 

St Andrew 1 s Day y i8<pj. 



CONTENTS. 



FIRST WEEK IN LENT. 

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Ash Wednesday — page. 

Keeping Under the Body I 

Thursday — 

Governing the Mind 6 

Friday — 

Bridling the Tongue . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 

Saturday — 

The Subjugation of the Will • 16 

SECOND WEEK IN LENT. 

£0e QWasferg (freer ^empfatfon. 

Monday — 

The Trial of our Faith 21 

Tuesday — 

Does God Lead us into Temptation ? 26 

Wednesdays - 

Is it a Sin to be Tempted ? 31 

Thursday — 

Temptation to Distrust God 36 



viii Contents. 

Friday — *age. 

Presumption and False Confidence. ....... 41 

Saturday — 

Doing Evil that Good may Come 46 

THIRD WEEK IN LENT. 

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Monday — 

Is the World our Friend or our Enemy ?..... 5 1 
Tuesday — 

Overcoming the Evil that is in the World 56 

Wednesday — 

Overcoming the World by Faith 62 

Thursday — 

Nonconformity to the World 66 

Friday — 

Crucifying the World 71 

Saturday — 

The Profit and Loss of Worldliness 76 

FOURTH WEEK IN LENT. 

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Monday — 

The School of Life 79 

Tuesday — 

The Poverty of Spirit 86 

Wednesday — 

By Meekness 91 



Contents. ix 

Thursday — page. 

By Mourning 96 

Friday — 

By Making Peace 101 

Saturday — 

Through Persecution 106 

FIFTH WEEK IN LENT. 

Monday — 

The Mystery of Iniquity 112 

Tuesday — 

The Pervasiveness of Sin 118 

Wednesday — 

The Deceitfulness of Sin 124 

Thursday — 

The Lawlessness of Sin .130 

Friday — 

The Malignity of Sin 136 

Saturday — 

The Mystery of Godliness 1 42 

PASSION WEEK. 

Monday — 

Betrayal 148 

Tuesday — 

Misjudgment 154 



x Contents. 

Wednesday — page. 

Poverty 160 

Thursday — 

Bodily Suffering 166 

Friday — 

Mental Suffering 172 

Saturday — 

The Reward of Suffering 178 

HOLY WEEK. 

Monday — 

What is Death ? 184 

Tuesday — 

Obedience unto Death 190 

Wednesday — 

Love Stronger than Death 196 

Maundy Thursday — 

The Blessing of a Finished Life 202 

Good Friday — 

The Surrender of the Soul , . 208 

Easter Even — 

After Death 214 



FIRST WEEK IN LENT. 
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ASH WEDNESDAY. 

KEEPING UNDER THE BODY. 



" Every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all 
things. Now, they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we 
are incorruptible. I, therefore, so run, not as uncertainly ; so 
fight I, not as one that beateth the air ; but I keep under my 
body and bring it into subjection," — I. Cor. ix. 25-27. 

Standing upon the threshold of another Lent, 
with an earnest desire to make the most of its 
sacred opportunities, we must to-day strike out 
some line of thought which we can follow 
through this holy tide. It ought to be one rich 
in spiritual suggestion, and full of practical help- 
fulness. Such a theme is suggested to us by 
St. Paul : — Striving for the Mastery ; the mas- 
tery over self, over satan, over the world, over 
adversity, over sin, over suffering, over death. 
Let us try to set before ourselves this great 
theme in all its many-sidedness. 

To-day let us consider the mastery which we 
need to gain over that lower part of ourselves 



2 First Week — Ash Wednesday. 

which the Bible speaks of as "the body" or 
"our flesh," 

St. Paul, drawing a vivid and forceful illus- 
tration from the Corinthian games, lets us into 
the secrets of his spiritual life, and gives us a 
glimpse of the methods by which his splendid 
character was matured. With possibly some 
pathetic allusion to the bodily weakness which 
they had despised and to that "thorn in the 
flesh " which so sorely troubled him, he reveals 
to his Corinthian converts the tactics of his spir- 
itual warfare. " So fight I, not as one that beat- 
eth the air ; but I keep under my body and bring 
it into subjection." Grasp the force of these 
words. They mean, "It is no unreal contest 
in which I am engaged. It is a deadly conflict. 
I am face to face with my enemy. Every 
blow must be delivered directly at him with the 
most telling effect. I fight fiercely, desperately, 
doggedly. I strike, not at random, but with all 
my skill and with all my might. I crush my 
adversary with repeated heavy blows. I humble 
him and keep him low." Such was the struggle 
which St. Paul assured his followers he was 
accustomed to carry on. 

But who was his opponent in this hard-fought 
fight, the recipient of these deadly blows ? None 
other than his own body, his flesh, the old Adam 
within him. This was the enemy against whom 



Keeping Under the Body. 3 

he had to contend and whom he was determined 
to subdue. Here was a foe within his own bor- 
ders against whom he must wage unceasing 
warfare. Here was a rebellious force which 
must be crushed and kept under close restraint, 
if he was to dwell in safety and possess his soul 
in peace. 

To this same warfare we are called all our life 
long, and especially during this Lent. The body 
with its pleasures, its exacting requirements, 
its incessant demands, is the enemy of our higher 
life. " The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and 
the spirit against the flesh ; and these are con- 
trary the one to the other." x There is an irre- 
pressible conflict between the two. 

How is the body to be subdued ? By scourg- 
ings, by severe asceticism, by punishing the 
body for the sins of the soul ? Some of us have 
seen that great painting of The Flagellants, in 
which a multitude of young and old are pictured 
as lashing themselves fiercely to turn aside the 
wrath of God. Is it thus that our bodies must 
be subdued ? Must we cut, and bruise, and 
starve our flesh into subjection to the soul? 
Which is right, the ascetic spirit of the past, or 
the easy living of to-day ? Neither of them is 
wholly right, they are both perilous extremes. 
When St. Paul spoke of keeping under his body, 

i Gal. v. 17. 



4 First Week — Ash Wednesday* 

he included in that expression all those claims 
originating from our existence in bodily form 
which war against the soul. Everything which 
is wisely adapted to overcome them ought to be 
used. There are some sins which only fasting 
and prayer can cast out. I There are some na- 
tures for whom severe bodily discipline is a 
necessity. For all of us the Church evidently 
considers some measure of abstinence from the 
gratification of the desires of our flesh as a most 
wholesome discipline. So long as we are in the 
body we shall not become spiritual by means 
wholly spiritual. We shall need a wise combi- 
nation of discipline for the soul and body both. 
We must keep under the body while we educate 
the soul. 

In this great conflict with our lower selves 
we have need of absolute sincerity. We must 
recognize our body, with all its strong animal 
appetites, its downward tendencies, its almost 
incorrigible selfishness, as an insidious and 
deadly enemy of our spiritual life. The deceit- 
ful lusts of the flesh which war against the soul 
are cruel and cunning foes. We must have 
no sham fighting, no beating of the air. The 
contest is a very real, a very anxious, a very 
momentous one. We cannot afford to deceive 
ourselves or to be deceived. We must be in 

i St. Matt. xvii. 21. 



Keeping Under the Body. 5 

dead earnest, must know exactly what we are 
about, and must make every blow tell. Has 
there been any unreality in our Christianity ? 
Has our warfare against self been in the past 
somewhat feeble and faltering ? Let us renew 
it to-day with a determination to fight as did St. 
Paul. Let us cast aside all secret tenderness 
for ourselves, and fight a good fight against the 
evil that is within us. Let us mercilessly buf- 
fet and mortify our fleshly lusts until we have 
brought them into complete subjection and 
gained the mastery over them. 



FIRST WEEK IN LENT. 

Zfc (Wla0f erg <&i>zx ^eff. 



THURSDAY. 

GOVERNING THE MIND. 



" Thou shalt love the Lord thy God . . . with all thy 
mind. — St Mark xiu 30. 

Have we grasped this great necessity, that 
the mind as well as all other parts of our 
being must be given up to God ? We have 
perhaps learned that ' ' the body is for the 
Lord." We have heard God calling out to us, 
"My son, give me thine heart." But do we 
realize also that we must serve Him "with a 
willing mind " ? Have we gained the mastery 
over our mind, and devoted it to the reasonable 
service of God ? 

It is not easy to do so nowadays. We live in 
a time of great intellectual freedom and activity. 
Everyone now claims the right to throw off all 
restraints, to think for himself, to form his own 
opinions, to explore the whole wide field of 
human thought. There is great danger in such 



Governing the Mind* 7 

a state of affairs. The human mind, like the 
human body, shares in the infirmities of our 
fallen race. It is prone to curiosity, to conceit, 
to false confidence, to pride and vanity. It is 
liable to run into error at every step. It, no 
less than the body, needs to be chastened, re- 
strained, governed, and subdued. Its excesses 
are more difficult to deal with than those of the 
body. The temptations which so easily beset 
it are more subtle and seductive. Self-discipline 
and self-restraint grow more difficult as we go 
up into the realm of mind. The sins of the 
intellect are not so gross, and open, and repulsive 
as those of the flesh. There is often a certain 
nobility about them, an air of distinction which 
goes far to palliate their wickedness, The world 
winks at them, apologizes for them, or openly 
approves of them. It has somehow come to be 
felt that the human mind is emancipated from 
all restraint, free to go its own way with or 
without God, less responsible to God than the 
body or the spirit of man. 

This is a terrible mistake. The mind as well 
as the body is for the Lord. It is no more free 
from moral obligation than any other part of 
the nature of man. It is accountable to God 
for every moment of its activity, for every 
thought, for every tone and temper which it 
indulges in. We are as solemnly bound to 



8 First Week — Thursday. 

think right as to do right, to govern the mind 
as to subdue the body, to have a pure mind as 
to keep a clean heart. We cannot banish God 
from the domain of human thought. His rights 
there are sacred and must be maintained. 

We are called, then, as Christians, to the 
mastery of the mind. We must claim it, sub- 
due it, govern it, use it for God. Its insatiable 
curiosity, its restlessness, its self-confidence, its 
rashness and irreverence must be restrained. 
We must hold it responsible for the use of all 
the time given it by God for its activities. 
While we give it needful rest and relaxation, 
we must systematically train it and devote 
it to the service of God. To crowd it with 
the knowledge of this world, to busy it con- 
stantly with human affairs, to hold it down to 
the low level of worldly pursuits, to concen- 
trate all its energies upon the accumulation of 
wealth or the activities of society, to exhaust it 
in these ways, is to defraud ourselves of all its 
truer, higher life. It is to debauch and squan- 
der one of the most precious gifts of God, to 
antagonize God and our better self. " To be 
carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually 
minded is life and peace. Because the carnal 
mind is enmity against God," 1 May God 
preserve us from a carnal mind. 

i Romans viii. 6, 7. 



Governing the Mind. 9 

The New Testament has a great deal to say 
about the government of the mind, and de- 
scribes many sorts of minds. Every one of its 
vividly descriptive phrases will furnish food for 
devout meditation. It warns us against minds 
which are "feeble, shaken, doubtful, double, 
defiled, blinded, fleshly, evil affected, hardened 
in pride, despiteful, wicked, corrupt, reprobate.' ' 
It loves to picture the beauty of a mind " sober, 
sound, steadfast, humble, lowly, willing, pure, 
spiritual, stayed on God." It exhorts us to "let 
this mind be in us which was in Christ Jesus." * 

Let us take to-day a few thoughts and work 
each of them out into a practical resolve. 

i. I will try to keep my mind pure. I will 
guard it against idle gossip, against the shallow 
talk of society, against the loose light literature 
of the day, against all that may soil and stain 
the spotless purity which ought to be the con- 
stant condition of a Christian mind. 

2. I will remember my responsibility to God 
for the use of my mind. I will take care that 
its occupations are such as God can approve. 
Its moods, its activities, and all its thoughts 
must be brought i ' into captivity to the obedi- 
ence of Christ." 2 I will deliberately undertake 
to fill it with the knowledge of God, and to 
occupy it with worthy pursuits. 

* Phil. ii. 5. 2 II. Cor. x. 5. 



io First Week — Thursday. 

3. Finally, I will govern my mind. It shall 
not run wild, ungoverned and unrestrained. I 
will hold it accountable to myself and to God 
continually. It shall obey me and do my will. 
It shall be under my control. I will master it and 
make it do my will. And I will often lift it up 
to God. 



FIRST WEEK IN LENT. 

£0e Qttasferg &uer ^eff. 



FRIDAY. 

BRIDLING THE TONGUE. 



" If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth 
not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man's religion 
is vain." — St. James i. 26. 

We shall need but a moment's thought to 
satisfy ourselves of the importance of bridling 
the tongue. Take all the words that have ever 
been spoken out of the mouth of man since the 
world began, weigh them well in a balance, and 
think how many of them might better have 
been left unsaid. How many of them are idle 
words, hollow words, sharp words, bitter words, 
blasphemous words, impure words? Must we 
not exclaim with the Psalmist, " Thou hast 
loved to speak all words that may do hurt, O 
thou false tongue." x It is an awful thing to 
think of the myriads of words which have fallen 
from the tongues of men and to consider how 

1 Psalm lii. 5. 



1 2 First Week — Friday. 

many of them have brought only grief and pain 
into the world. Verily, "the tongue is an 
unruly evil, full of deadly poison.' ' " So is the 
tongue among our members, that it defileth the 
whole body, and setteth on fire the course of 
nature, and it is set on fire of hell." x 

If this language seems unduly strong, we 
must remember that sins of the tongue are 
always worse than they seem, because they 
betray the wrong that lurks in the heart. " Out 
of the abundance of the heart the mouth speak- 
eth." 2 It is only the pure in heart who can see 
God, He who bringeth evil words out of an 
evil heart cannot see God, either in this world 
or in the world to come. Pure words out of a 
clean heart are like "apples of gold in pictures 
of silver. M 3 

Let us take a firm hold to-day upon this funda- 
mental principle of the Christian life — if we are 
to be at peace with God and man, if we are to 
be at peace within ourselves, we must learn to 
rule the tongue. Christian people especially 
must do so. Good people, those who are lead- 
ing what the world recognizes as godly lives, 
are in great danger at this very point. They 
may be free from some of the grosser sins of 
the tongue, but are they not often critical, cen- 
sorious, uncharitable, busy about others' affairs, 

i St. James iii. 8. 6. 2 St. Matt. xii. 34. 3 Prov, xxv. II. 



Bridling the Tongue. 13 

careless in their speech? Do they not sometimes 
relax their restraint upon the tongue, and under 
the cover of intimate friendship or in moments 
of indignation permit themselves to speak words 
which may do harm? Are they always care- 
ful, conscientious^ scrupulous as to what they 
say? They need to be especially watchful of 
themselves because their words have a double 
power for harm. The general uprightness of 
their lives makes a wrong or idle word from 
their lips doubly dangerous. The closer we 
walk with God, the more~ watchfully must we 
guard the door of our lips. 

There is one vice of the tongue which every 
Christian ought to hate and shun. Talkative- 
ness is one of the chief errors of our day and is 
a deadly foe of the spiritual life. No talkative 
person will ever attain to a high degree of 
sanctity. An unbridled tongue is " an unruly 
evil, full of deadly poison. ,, One of the greatest 
masters of the spiritual life has given it as his 
judgment that " Talkativeness is the mother of 
sloth, the sign of ignorance and folly, the door 
of slander, the minister of lies, the destroyer of 
fervent devotion.' ' We may add that it is the 
offspring of pride, for it is only those who 
think much of themselves and set a high value 
upon their own words who will have much to 
say. 



14 First Week — Friday. 

There is one theme, however, upon which we 
might well talk more freely than we do, that is, 
about God and the things of God. There is little 
danger that we will talk too much of Him. The 
tongue is the best member that we have, because 
with it we can praise Him now and through 
eternity. Christians ought to talk more freely 
of the things which most concern their souls. 
" Come/' said Archbishop Usher to his most fa- 
miliar friend, " let us always say something about 
Christ before we part. M 

Speak then, O my tongue, less often of thy 
neighbour and thyself and more of God. And 
let all thy words be such as these : 

Pure words out of a clean heart, free not only 
from all sin and shame, but free from world- 
liness and all that savours not of God. 

True words, true in intention, true in appear- 
ance, true towards men, true towards God, true 
enough to stand the test of the great Judgment 
Day. 

Kind words, such as our Saviour spoke in the 
days of His earthly ministry. They cost little 
and are worth much. They return upon us an 
hundred-fold and fill our life with sweetness 
and unfailing joy. 

Helpful words, full of timely warning and 
encouragement, words of wise counsel in the 
time of need, strong words of righteousness and 



Bridling the Tongue. 1 5 

truth sown broadcast in the wide world-field, of 
which God shall give the increase in His own 
good time. " A word spoken in due season, 
how good it is! " x 

Go forth, O my soul, and speak such words; 
kind and helpful, pure and true. Make it thy 
lifelong habit to bring them forth; let God 
teach thee and tell thee how; and rule thy 
tongue prudently with all thy power, remember- 
ing this, " If any man offend not in word, the 
same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle 
the whole body. 2 

* Prov. xv. 23. a St. James iii. 2. 



FIRST WEEK IN LENT. 

Z$t (gtasf erg <£toer ^eff . 



SATURDAY. 

THE SUBJUGATION OF THE WILL. 



" Not my will, but Thine, be done." — St. Luke xxii. 42. 

Out of the shadows of Gethsemane, out of a 
heart wrung with agony, from a tongue that 
spake as never man spake, these words were 
flung into the midst of a lost world. The Son 
of Man was Iworking out that prayer which He 
had given as the Son of God, '' Thy will be 
done on earth as it is in heaven." In the glory 
which He had with His Father before the world 
was, 1 there had been unbroken harmony of 
will, and now, hard as it was for His human 
nature to bear the strain, He held His human 
will in close conformity to the Divine. If one 
may reverently say so, it was the crisis in His 
human life, the fiercest assault of the powers of 
evil, the final triumph in the warfare of self 

1 St. John xvii. 5. 



The Subjugation of the Will* I / 

against God, the complete surrender of the 
lower to the higher self. In the garden of 
Gethsemane was consummated in will, if not in 
deed, the Eternal Sacrifice of Calvary. 

That same battle must be fought in every 
human soul. When the flesh has been disciplined, 
when the mind has been devoted to the service 
of God, the study of His Word, and when that 
unruly member, the tongue, has been brought 
under control, when the outworks of the evil that 
is within us have been won, the citadel of the soul 
remains yet to be stormed. Man has a will, sov- 
ereign and uncontrolled. Until it has been sub- 
dued and surrendered to God, the victory is not 
won. This is the irrepressible conflict which each 
of us has to fight. Self-love and self-will are 
strong, and with most of us the struggle must 
be long and hard. But it must be fought and 
won, if we are to be true soldiers and servants 
of Christ. "Not everyone that saith unto Me, 
Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of 
Heaven, but he that doeth the will of My Father 
which is in heaven/' z 

Let us realize clearly, then, what it is that we 
have to do. If we are to be true Christians, to 
live a Christlike life, we must subdue not only 
all the other powers of our body and soul, but 
also our will, to God. We cannot serve two 

i St. Matthew vii. 21. 



1 8 First Week — Saturday, 

masters, God and self. If " Christ pleased not 
Himself, " if He throughout His earthly life sub- 
mitted Himself entirely to the will of His 
Father which was in heaven, we must try to 
do the same. This is the straight and narrow 
way to holiness and happiness. It was a favourite 
saying of St. Bernard: " Let there be an end 
of your own will, and there will be no such 
thing as hell. Master your own will, and you 
have at once removed that place, to which you 
would otherwise have been bound and where 
you would have been tormented, just as much 
as if hell itself were destroyed and its flames 
were extinguished." But St. Bernard only 
shows us one side of the truth. We shall 
never find perfect peace and happiness until 
we bring our rebellious human will into perfect 
harmony with the divine. Until then life will 
be full of anxiety, disappointment, conflict, and 
unrest, because we are "fighting against God." 
But from the day when we bring our will to the 
foot of the Cross and surrender it into the hands 
of God, from that day forth our eternal life, 
here and hereafter, will be full of peace and 
happiness. It will matter little what its events 
and vicissitudes may be. We are in the strong 
and loving hands of God, who doeth all things 
well. We have brought heaven down to earth. 
How, then, is God's will to be done ? Our 



The Subjugation of the Will. 19 

Lord Himself has told us — "Thy will be done 
on earth as it is in heaven." Let us take this 
central petition of the Lord's Prayer as our 
intention for to-day and ask ourselves how 
God's will is done in heaven, so that we may 
translate the same methods of activity into our 
daily life. 

First, it is done promptly. The angels never 
lag in the service of God. There is no ques- 
tioning, no dallying, no making of excuses, 
they do instantly the will of God. To hear is 
to obey. The will of God is no sooner said 
than done. Delay or failure on their part would 
disorder the plans of God and wreck the uni- 
verse. 

Secondly, they do it gladly. We cannot 
imagine an angel going grudgingly, unwillingly, 
rebelliously to do God's will. We cannot think 
of them as desiring to do something else, shirk- 
ing their work, hating to serve God. No, they 
are ready, anxious, glad to do whatever God 
wills, proud to do it. They are happy with an 
infinite joy in even the humblest ministry to 
human souls. 

Finally, God's will is done perfectly in heaven. 
Every cup of loving service put into angel 
hands is filled " up to the brim.'' No task is 
unfulfilled, no duty left undone. All their work 
is made " perfect in the sight of the Lord/' 



20 First Week — Saturday. 

Why cannot we do the will of God on earth as 
it is done in heaven? Why do we not once for 
all unite our will with God's will and be at peace ? 
If we would only do so, if we would but follow 
the example of a godly life given us by the 
holy angels and by our Blessed Lord, we 
should at once enter into peace, that sweet peace 
of God which passeth all understanding and has 
infinite power to satisfy the human soul. Our 
hearts would soon become so closely knit to 
God, and our lives so entirely melted into his, 
that it would be impossible for us to go contrary 
to His holy will. 



SECOND WEEK IN LENT. 

t$t (JJtasf erg £)t>et £empfafton. 



MONDAY. 

THE TRIAL OF OUR FAITH. 



" My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers 
temptations ; knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh 
patience." — St. James i. 2> j. 

Let us meditate during this week upon the 
great mystery of temptation and try to learn 
how we are to gain the mastery over it. 

What is temptation ? In the authorized ver- 
sion of the Bible the word generally means 
to test, to put on trial, to put to the proof. It 
is only occasionally that it means to solicit to 
evil. Temptation, in the Scriptural sense, 
is ordinarily a test of our virtue, a trial of our 
faith. It is anything which requires us to show 
of what metal we are made, to choose between 
right and wrong. It may arise from the cir- 
cumstances in which we are placed, from the 
influences by which we are beset, or from our 



22 Second Week — Monday. 

own inner selves. But however it may originate, 
it is a test which will infallibly show what we 
are. 

Temptation, then, is an important element in 
the discipline of human life. The constant 
necessity of choice, the responsibility of action, 
is a liberal education to the soul. It is the 
exercise by which moral muscle is developed 
and maintained. It is the probation under 
which we are placed and upon which hang the 
eternal issues of human life. God permits it to 
come upon us in order to ■ ' try our patience for 
the example of others, and that our faith may 
be found, in the day of the Lord, laudable, 
glorious, and honourable, to the increase of 
glory and endless felicity ; or else to correct and 
amend in us whatsoever doth offend the eyes of 
our heavenly Father. " If rightly received, " it 
shall turn to our profit and help us forward in 
the right way that leadeth unto everlasting life." * 

Temptation, therefore, is not only a needful 
but a blessed provision for our souls. Without 
it the highest type of character cannot be pro- 
duced. There may be great purity of heart 
and genuine sanctity without much temptation. 
But the loftiest heights of human perfection 
cannot be reached, the finest and strongest 
types of character cannot be matured, without 
i Office for the Visitation of the Sick. 



The Trial of Our Faith. 23 

severe trial of our faith. The man who has 
repeatedly met and conquered temptation, who 
has breasted all the world's storms, who has 
been victorious on a hundred fields of spiritual 
combat, is the truly great man. The woman, who 
out of the great deep of affliction has struggled 
bravely on and up to God, is nearest to Him in 
the end. The Beloved Disciple was nearer to 
his Lord as :he toiled in the mines of Patmos 
than when in the inexperience of youth he 
would call down fire upon Samaria. The whole 
ordering of this world and of human life is such 
as to exercise the soul, to draw out its higher 
powers, and to build up its better self, if only 
the heart is right with God. To him who has 
any honest desire to do right it is a hard but 
blessed discipline adapted to educate and bring 
to perfection his whole better self. If we had 
no help to do right, if the chances were hope- 
lessly against us, if God had put us into our 
present environment without giving us the 
power to refuse the evil and choose the good, 
we should have some ground for complaint. 
But such is not the case. Every soul has ample 
inducements to do good, has sufficient help 
from outside itself to turn every rock of offense 
into a stepping-stone on which it may mount 
up to God. If our eyes were only open to the 
piritual world, we should see, as Elisha's timid 



24 Second Week — Monday. 

servant did, that they who are for us are more 
than they that be against us. r 

We have the distinct assurance from Holy 
Writ, " There hath no temptation taken you but 
such as is common to man ; but God is faithful, 
who will not suffer you to be tempted above 
that ye are able; but will with the temptation 
also make a way to escape, that ye may be able 
to bear it." 2 

Let us take to-day a firm grasp upon this 
great truth, that temptation is a necessary 
element in our spiritual life. " Blessed is the 
man that endureth temptation, for when he is 
tried he shall receive the crown of life which 
the Lord hath promised to them that love 
Him." 3 

Temptation is not an unmixed evil, a stern 
and unwelcome necessity. It is a severe but 
wise and needful discipline for the purifying and 
strengthening of our souls. It gives us an oppor- 
tunity to prove our love and faithfulness to God. 
It is the timber out of which all high character is 
to be built, the raw material from which we 
may weave the robe of righteousness. " Though 
now for a season, if need be, we are in heavi- 
ness, through manifold temptations,'' we ought 
greatly to rejoice "that the trial of our faith, 

i II. Kings vi. 15, 17. 2 I. Cor. x. 13. 

3 St. James i. 12. 



The Trial of Our Faith. 2 5 

being much more precious than of gold that 
perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be 
found unto praise and honour and glory at the 
appearing of Jesus Christ." x 

1 I. St. Peter i. 6, 7. 



SECOND WEEK IN LENT. 
£0e (Jttasf erg <D#et temptation. 



TUESDAY. 

DOES GOD LEAD US INTO TEMPTATION ? 



" Lead us not into temptation." — St. Matt, vi, ij. 

As we were thinking yesterday of the import- 
ant part which temptation plays in the mak- 
ing of a Christian character, it may be that some 
of us asked ourselves, ' ' Why then do we pray to 
be delivered from temptation? What did our 
Lord mean when He gave us that prayer? " It 
is a right and natural inquiry. We must try to 
answer it. 

Does God ever lead us into temptation? Yes, He 
does. It is true He never seeks to draw us into 
sin, never incites us to evil. It is only devils 
and wicked men who do that. " Let no man 
say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, 
for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither 
tempteth He any man." ■ But God leads men 

i St. James i. 13. 



Does God Lead Us into Temptation ? 27 

into temptation, that is, he suffers them to be 
placed in positions where the) 7 will be put to the 
severest test. He tried the faith of Abraham 
when He bade him go up to Mt. Moriah and sac- 
rifice his son. He led Balaam into temptation 
when he permitted him to go down into the 
land of Moab with the king's messengers. Our 
Blessed Lord w T as led up of the Spirit into the 
wilderness to be tempted of the devil. * 

It is the same with us. God orders all our 
goings. His providence extends to the minutest 
details of our daily life. We are continually exer- 
cising our free will in the choice of alternatives 
and are at liberty to choose whom we will serve, 
but the opportunities of choice are all given us by 
God. We cannot make our own environment, 
though we can influence it somewhat. God 
places us day by day in certain circumstances, 
He leads us through certain courses of life, 
which are perfectly adapted to test and disci- 
pline each of us and determine what our future 
is to be. He suffers us to be constantly placed 
in positions where w T e are severely tried, in 
order that we may be educated up to a high 
standard of Christian character. Life is a train- 
ing-school in which every experience is divinely 
planned to teach and strengthen us, if rightly 
met and used. He who leads us into it has pro- 

1 St. Matt. iv. I. 



28 Second Week — Tuesday. 

vided a way out of it, has given us the strength 
to master it. 

Yes, God leads lis into temptation, but He is 
ready to lead us out of it, to deliver us from the 
evil. If we were left to ourselves, we should 
be continually running into danger. There are 
perils on every hand, though we are too much 
blinded by the glare and glamour of this world to 
see them all. Only God and the angels know 
how near and threatening they are. We lay our 
plans, and mark out our course in life, and set 
our hearts upon the pleasures and prizes of this 
world. We pursue them, we strive after them, 
but often we do not get them. What we 
call a cruel fate thwarts our best laid plans, 
defeats our purposes, snatches the prizes of 
life out of our very grasp. Then we grieve 
and murmur, and perhaps rebel against God and 
curse Him. But we make an awful mistake in 
doing so. The things we desired were not best 
for us, they were full of peril for our souls, they 
would perhaps have dragged us down to ruin. 
God in His good providence was leading us out 
of temptation, turning us aside from the way of 
destruction, snatching us from the brink of the 
precipice. How often He has to do that! And 
how ungrateful we are, how slow to recognize 
the hand of our good God which has rescued us ! 
If we could only see things as they are, we 



Does God Lead Us into Temptation ? 29 

should realize that most of the disappointments 
and denials which we have to bear are but bless- 
ings in disguise, merciful deliverances from 
perils into which we were determined to rush. 

This, then, is what we mean when we pray, 
"Lead us not into temptation": — Lead us on 
through life, not in the way which we would 
choose, a way beset with temptation and dan- 
ger at every step, but guide our feet into the 
way of peace ; deliver us from the evil into 
which we would plunge if left to ourselves ; 
lead us in the paths of righteousness for Thy 
Name's sake ; turn our steps aside from every 
pitfall which satan has dug for them ; suffer us 
not to rush on in rash self-confidence, but 
restrain and guide us, lest we dash our foot 
against a stone or sudden destruction come upon 
us unawares. 

Let us, then, appropriate to ourselves the 
words of one of our sweetest hymns, in which 
all this is most beautifully expressed: 

" Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, 

Lead Thou me on ! 
The i ; ght is dark, and I am far from home, 

Lead Thou me on ! 
Keep Thou my feet ! I do not ask to see 
The distant scene ; one step enough for me. 



30 Second Week — Tuesday 

" I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou 

Shouldst lead me on ; 
I loved to choose and see my path ; but now 

Lead Thou me on ! 
I loved the garish day ; and, spite of fears, 
Pride ruled my will ; remember not past years. 

" So long Thy power has blest me, sure it still 

Will lead me on, 
O'er moor and fen, o'er crag and torrent, till 

The night is gone ; 
And with the morn those angel faces smile, 
Which I have loved long since and lost awhile." 

In this humble and chastened spirit let us 
pray very earnestly to God not to lead us into 
temptation and to prevent us from leading other 
souls astray. 



SECOND WEEK IN LENT. 

tM ($ta*f erg <&Qtx £emjrf at ion. 



WEDNESDAY. 

IS IT A SIN TO BE TEMPTED ? 



" My son, if thou come to serve the Lord, prepare thy soul for 
temptation." — Ecclesiastcs it. i. 

Is it a sin to be tempted ? Does not the pres- 
ence of temptation indicate that there is some- 
thing wrong within us ? When the old familiar 
temptations keep knocking at the door of our 
heart, is it not our fault ? If we were living 
thoroughly Christian lives, would we not be free 
from the temptations which now so easily beset 
us ? No doubt we have all questioned thus in 
the honest sincerity of our hearts, fearing lest 
some fault or weakness of our own is responsible 
for the number and severity of the temptations 
which confiont us day by day. Of course, the 
temptations which are sent by God for the trial 
of our faith do not imply that we have fallen 
into sin. But do the persuasions of satan to 



3 2 Second Week — Wednesday, 

evil prove that our hearts are not right with 
God? 

When such questionings arise we need to 
be reminded that temptation is the lot of 
man. No human soul has ever escaped it. None 
ever will. No degree of sanctity can ever lift 
us out of its reach. The greatest saint has to 
meet it as well as the least. The holiest lives 
have been beset by the most terrible tempta- 
tions. Men are continually falling from high 
places into bottomless depths of guilt and de- 
spair. No contrivance of man, no retirement 
from the world, can remove us out of the 
great tempter's reach. A long life of holiness 
will not drive satan from the door of the heart. 
He may find entrance even at the last. The 
eternal Son of God in all His spotless purity 
"was tempted in all points like as we are." 
Surely satan, who dared assail Him, will never 
fear nor fail to attack us. Most of his tempta- 
tions come to us whether we will or no. They 
are guests who come unbidden to the door of 
our hearts and clamor to be let in. If we re- 
ject them, they will not therefore cease to come. 
So long as life lasts we shall never get beyond 
their reach. They form a part of the life-long 
discipline by which in God's good providence 
our souls are to be tried and trained. Let us 
comfort ourselves with this thought. 



Is It a Sin to be Tempted? 33 

But at the same time we must remember 
that, while we are not answerable for their 
coming, we are responsible if they stay. The 
great question is not whether we are visited by 
temptation, but whether we welcome it, enter- 
tain it, make it at home in our hearts. It is no 
sin to be tempted, else were our Lord the chief 
of sinners. But it is a deadly sin to dally with 
temptation, to trifle with it, to let it find a 
lodging in our minds. Our safety and our 
spiritual health depend upon our promptness 
and firmness in keeping it out of doors. There 
is a deep significance in what is told us of our 
great High Priest, " He was in all points 
tempted like as we are, yet without sin." z 

Our Lord's temptation teaches us not to be 
too much troubled because we are beset by 
invitations to sin, but it brings another lesson 
which it is no less important for us to learn. 
Every effort to build up our spiritual life will 
be met by an attempt of the powers of evil to 
tear it down. Satan's intelligence is keen. 
He need not trouble himself about those who 
are not trying to do right. But the moment a 
human soul rouses itself to serve God, enters 
upon the pursuit of holiness, or attempts to 
reconsecrate its energies, he wakens into violent 
activity. He becomes alarmed lest it should 

1 Hebrews iv. 15. 



34 Second Week — Wednesday. 

succeed, and brings every artifice to bear to 
thwart its plans. He fights desperately, if need 
be. He besieges that soul with temptations 
such as it never dreamed of before. He tries 
to leave no place for God in all its thoughts. 
He flatters, he cajoles, he threatens it. Some- 
times he feigns defeat, only to prepare the 
way for a more desperate attack upon some 
unguarded point. But so long as this life lasts, 
he will never abandon the hope of victory. 

It was exactly so with our Blessed Lord. We 
hear nothing of satan until He reached the 
threshold of His ministry. Then it was, while 
He was gathering together all His powers for 
the great work which He had come to do, that 
satan met Him. Not in the ordinary courses of 
life, but in the sacred seclusion where He 
sought to be alone with the Father, in the very 
Holy of Holies of His human life, satan sought 
Him. 

It will be so with us. Every effort to draw 
nigh to God will awaken satan to renewed ac- 
tivity. Every season of grace will bring him 
to our side. Every deconsecration of ourselves 
to the service of God will subject us to a renewed 
attack. We must expect it, we must prepare 
for it, we must not be taken off our guard. 
A fierce attack of temptation generally means, 
not that our spiritual life is dying out, but that 



Is It a Sin to be Tempted? 35 

it is burning brighter and that satan is alarmed. 
A wise and experienced Christian is not surprised 
when his efforts to do right involve him in 
renewed temptations to do wrong, when his 
attempt to keep a holy [Lent provokes a new 
and violent attack of the enemies who lie in 
wait for his soul. He knew beforehand that it 
would be so. He goes serenely on his way, 
watchful but undismayed, and puts his whole 
trust in God. 

" CHRISTIAN ! dost thou see tnem 
^^ On the holy ground, 
How the powers of darkness 

Rage thy steps around ? 
Christian ! up and smite them, 

Counting gain but loss ; 
In the strength that cometh 

By the holy Cross. 

Christian ! dost thou feel them, 

How they work within, 
Striving, tempting, luring, 

Goading into sin ? 
Christian ! never tremble ; 

Never be downcast ; 
Gird thee for the battle, 

Watch and pray and fast." 



SECOND WEEK IN LENT. 

%$t (JJtasf erg <*>uet gempfafion 



THURSDAY. 

TEMPTATION TO DISTRUST GOD. 



" If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be 
made bread." — St. Matthew iv. j. 

Let us meditate during the remaining days of 
this week upon the temptations of our Lord in 
the wilderness and try to learn what they teach. 
Although He was the Son of God, He was at 
the same time the Son of Man. The tempta- 
tions of satan appealed to His human nature, 
they were intensely human, " such as are com- 
mon to man," exactly such as we have to meet 
and overcome. They were the very tempta- 
tions with which satan is plying us this Lent. 

The first was to distrust God. At the close 
of His long fast Jesus "was an hungered.'' 
Thus far, no doubt, He had been in a spiritual 
ecstasy, so absorbed in communion with His 
Father that the wants of His body were sus- 
pended for the time. But now at last the sharp 



Temptation to Distrust God. 3 J 

pangs of hunger begin to make themselves felt. 
Satan sees his opportunity. Pointing to the 
stones of the desert, he exclaims: " If thou be 
the Son of God, command that these stones be 
made bread." His meaning is, "God has up- 
held you thus far, but now He has forsaken 
you. He has left you alone here in hunger and 
thirst. Give me some proof of divine power, or 
I shall not believe that you are His Son. If 
you are indeed His Son, you are as mighty and 
as full of resource as He. You have no need to 
wait for Him to satisfy your wants. You are 
quite equal to the emergency. Command that 
these stones be made bread, and your hunger 
will instantly be satisfied. ' ' 

It was a temptation to distrust the good 
providence of His Father and work a miracle 
before His time. But our Blessed Lord was 
not to be seduced into such an act of self-will. 
He had come, not to do His own will, but the 
will of Him who sent Him. Until His Father 
was ready to satisfy His hunger, He would wait. 
However great the suffering might be, He had 
an inner source of strength. His soul was 
feeding on the Word of God and the needs of 
His body sank into insignificance. As the Son 
of Man He knew the Hebrew Scriptures 
thoroughly. From out their familiar pages 
He chose the words with which to make reply. 



38 Second Week — Thursday. 

He answered and said: "It is written, man 
shall not live by bread alone, but by every 
word which proceedeth out of the mouth of 
God." 1 That is, " There is a higher and 
more precious life than that of the flesh. The 
soul does not live by bread alone. It will live, 
though the body die. It feeds upon the truth 
and love and life of God. It finds in them 
such satisfaction that the vulgar needs of the 
body are ignored. God is feeding my soul here 
in the wilderness, and that spiritual food is my 
meat and drink. I leave it to Him to satisfy 
the baser needs of my flesh.' ' Thus did our 
Lord meet the temptation to distrust the divine 
providence and to exalt Himself. 

Is satan whispering that same temptation in 
our ears this Lent? God has set before us this 
holy season as a time for retirement from the 
world, for mortifying the appetites of the body, 
and attending to the wants of the soul. Does 
satan tell you there is no need for that? Does 
he assure you that one part of the year is exactly 
the same as another and none more holy than 
the rest? Does he suggest that you are not self- 
indulgent, that you have a hard enough life as 
it is, that you are already keeping Lent all the 
year round, that you need no Lenten discipline, 
no self-imposed rules? Does he try to fill your 

i St. Matthew iv. 4; Deut. viii. 3. 



Temptation to Distrust God. 39 

mind with business, with the cares of social and 
family life, until there is little or no room left 
for thoughts of God and the life of the soul? 
He will do so, if he can. You may be sure he 
is cunningly and cruelly manipulating all his 
forces so as to crush out and kill all the higher 
life of your soul. Be on your guard. Resist 
him to his face. Say to him, "It is written, 
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every 
word which proceedeth out of the mouth of 
God. " "I will not be blinded to the life I am liv- 
ing. It is a high and holy thing. The physical 
life which I live is only a part of my real life. 
The bread which perisheth can nourish only that 
lower part of myself. It cannot feed my soul. 
It cannot sustain my true, my higher life. I 
will not neglect my better self. I must care 
for it first and let the needs of the body come 
afterwards. I must seek first the Kingdom 
of God and His righteousness, and all these 
things shall be added unto me. x I will trust 
the good providence of my God. I will not 
neglect and starve my soul in order that I may 
take thought what I shall eat, or what I shall 
drink, or wherewithal I shall be clothed. I 
will use this holy season to nourish and develop 
my spiritual powers. I will feed upon the Word 
of God." 

1 St. Matt. vi. 33. 



4-0 Second Week — Thursday. 

Here is our great lesson for to-day. When we 
are filled with pity at the wants of men, and cry 
out in distress, "Whence shall we buy bread 
that these may eat ? " — when the sense of our 
own needs is strong, and we see not how they 
are to be satisfied, then comes the assurance of 
a Living Bread. 

It is our tempted and victorious Lord Himself 
who tells us, "I am the bread of life ; he that 
cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that 
believe th on me shall never thirst." " And the 
bread which I will give is my flesh, which I will 
give for the life of the world." x 

Lord, evermore give us this Bread. 

i St. John vi. 35, 51. 



SECOND WEEK IN LENT. 



FRIDAY. 

PRESUMPTION AND FALSE CONFIDENCE. 



"If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down." — St. Matt, 
iv. 6. 

When we have met and mastered the first of 
satan's temptations it may be that he will pre- 
sent to us a second, as he did to our Lord. 
Having found that Jesus could not be induced to 
distrust the providence of God, he attempted to 
make him presume too much upon it. By the 
exercise of supernatural powers of motion, he 
conveyed our Lord into the Holy City and set 
Him "ona pinnacle of the temple," a portico 
overlooking the brook Kedron, at a height so 
great that the eye could hardly penetrate to the 
bottom of the abyss. He dared Him, as a proof 
of His divinity, to cast Himself down, assuring 
Him in the words of Holy Scripture that, if He 
were indeed the Son of God, the angels would 
bear Him up. It was a bold and cunning 



4 2 Second Week — Friday. 

attempt, but (like the first) it was promptly and 
crushingly met by our Lord. His reply is deeply 
significant. "It is written again, Thou shalt 
not tempt the Lord thy God." z 

Is it possible, then, for us to tempt God? 
Here is an important question for us all. If 
we search the Scriptures, we shall find that they 
speak frequently of man as "tempting God." 
The Children of Israel tempted Him in the 
wilderness, when by their repeated rebellion 
they tried His patience and provoked His wrath. 
The Scribes and Pharisees by their foolish and 
unlearned questions often tempted Christ. It 
must be true, then, that man can tempt God. 
But how ? Surely not by enticing Him to do 
wrong ? St. James has solemnly assured us 
that " God cannot be tempted of evil." 2 How 
then ? By putting Him needlessly to the test to 
see what He will do, by presumptuously trying 
His providence to see how far it will go, by 
thrusting ourselves into danger where we ' ' have 
no power of ourselves to help ourselves," by 
perversely going contrary to His will. In these 
and other like ways we may tempt God, try 
His patience, and forfeit the right to expect His 
help. It is only when we are about His busi- 
ness, doing His will, that His angels will bear 
us up. It is a false confidence which leads us 

i St. Matt. iv. 7. 2 St. James, i. 13. 



Presumption and False Confidence. 43 

to reject God and at the same time depend upon 
His help to save us in every time of need. Here 
is the secret of most of our falls into sin. We 
rashly and wilfully go our own way and expect 
the good hand of our God to bear us up. We try 
experiments with God, seek safety or happiness 
by unlawful ways, put ourselves in peril need- 
lessly, and, when destruction rushes upon us, 
expect God to interfere and save us by a 
miracle. We need to remember that it is 
written, "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy 
God." 

This second temptation of our Lord is one 
with which we shall have to wrestle this Lent. 
Satan will try to make us satisfied with our 
spiritual life as it is. He will tell us that we 
are living very well before the eyes of men and 
do not need to make any especial efforts after 
holiness. He will whisper that God is loving 
and merciful, and that even if we should rebel 
against Him now, somehow He will bring peace 
at the last. "Cast thyself down," he says, 
" down into the depths of carelessness and false 
confidence. Be not afraid. The angels will 
bear thee up. If thou art the child of God, he 
has given them charge concerning thee. They 
will not suffer thy soul to be lost." 

It is a dreadful delusion which he would prac- 
tice upon us. He wishes to make us think that 



44 Second Week — Friday. 

this Lent has no duties for us. " It may be 
needful for others/ ' he says, "but you do not 
need it." Let us not be deceived. We do need 
this Lent. We need to fast, and pray, and 
humble ourselves in the sight of God. We need 
every help which Christ and His Church can 
give. This Lent is a time of trial to us. We 
must either go backward or forward. Which 
will it be ? When Easter comes, where will it 
find us, asleep under the flattery of satan, or 
watching by the Cross of Christ ? 

The place which satan chose for the second 
temptation of our Lord was the most sacred 
spot on earth, His Father's House. It was "a 
pinnacle of the Temple,'' a vast and dizzy 
height, a gallery of such splendid workmanship 
as made it one of the most magnificent things 
under the sun. Standing there at the threshold 
of His ministry, His human heart must have 
swelled with love for that holy place and with 
solemn consciousness of the mighty powers 
which slept within Him. He might well wish 
to put them to the proof at once. 

It is often so with us. Satan comes to us as 
we stand upon the high places of human life, the 
dizzy heights of greatness in the Church or in the 
world, and bids us cast ourselves down. Every 
human dignity is a place of peril to the soul, for 
the great tempter stands by its side. "God's 



Presumption and False Confidence. 45 

manner is, when He meaneth to exalt a man, He 
will first humble him and make him low. The 
devil's manner is, we see, clean contrary ; to lift 
them up to the clouds, that He may bring them 
down to the grave, yea, to the lowest grave. He 
carrieth them the higher to throw them down 
with the greater violence. " So said old Bishop 
Andrewes, and our own experience proves the 
truth of it. Even the spiritual elevation which 
we gain in a well-kept Lent may tempt us to 
pride and self-confidence. Let us, therefore, 
"be not high-minded, but fear." 



SECOND WEEK IN LENT. 
£0e (gtasferg £)t>er £empfafton* 



SATURDAY. 

DOING EVIL THAT GOOD MAY COME. 



" All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and 
worship me." — St. Matt. iv. 9. 

The final temptation which satan presented 
to our Lord was even bolder than the rest. 
It was that by a single act of homage to him- 
self He should hasten the appointed course 
of events and win the whole world with one 
stroke. Exhibiting to Him "all the king- 
doms of this world and the glory of them," he 
said to our Lord in effect: " I am the prince of 
this world; these kingdoms are now mine. 
You hope to gain them. But how? If you 
are to wrest them from my grasp, you have no 
easy task. It will take time and toil and suf- 
fering, and you will win only a partial conquest 
in the end. But all that is needless. We are 
here alone. Make one moment's act of homage 



Doing Evil That Good May Come. 47 

to me, accept them from my hand, and you 
shall have them now, you shall have them all. 
There is no need of shame and suffering. All 
that you desire is in your grasp to-day." 

Ah, but was there no need? The word 
which God had spoken through His holy 
prophets since the world began, could He let 
it go unfulfilled? The work which His Father 
had given Him to do, should He do it in any 
other than the Father's way? The love and 
loyalty which belong to God alone, could they 
be given to His enemy? The worship due only 
to Almighty God, should it be given to a 
fallen creature of His Hand? No. To do as 
He was bid would be to stultify Himself, to act 
a lie, to violate the eternal realities which He 
disclosed when He affirmed, " I and my Father 
are one. " x 

What if our Lord had yielded then? What if 
the thought of His Cross and passion, and the 
vision of Calvary had overcome Him there? 
But He could not yield and be Himself. Firm 
as the mountain rock on which He stood were 
His love and loyalty to God and man. Clearly 
rang out His voice through the mountain air : 
" Get thee hence, satan; for it is written, Thou 
shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only 
shalt thou serve." 2 Baffled and beaten in 

* St. John x. 30. 2 St. Matt. iv. 10. 



48 Second Week — Saturday. 

every attempt, satan fled away and left our 
Lord alone. His power was broken, mankind 
was freed from slavery, the first great victory 
of the Son of Man was won. 

The same temptation often comes to us, the 
temptation to take a wrong road to a right end, 
to weary of God's way and strike out a short cut 
for ourselves, to go our own way rather than 
God's way. It is a subtle temptation and is 
assisted by the weakness of our flesh. The paths 
of righteousness often seem to us very long and 
roundabout, while the ways of sin look so easy 
and so short. The tired soul faints and falters 
and wonders if it shall ever reach the end and be 
safe home at last. Then satan steals softly to 
our side, shows how steep and thorny God's way 
is, how hard it is to live a long life of virtue 
and self-denial and self-restraint. He brings 
up in long array all the trials of patience and 
faith and love, the struggles against human 
weakness and passion and appetite. He sets 
them all before us and says, " It is too much. 
You can never endure it to the end. God has 
given you too hard a task. You will only have 
a long life of anxiety and unrest and be found 
wanting at the last. God has been hard with 
you, I will be easier. Why should you consume 
your life in a hopeless struggle after perfection. 
Why not give it up at once and come down to 



Doing Evil That Good May Come. 49 

the standard of the world? Then the way shall 
be made short and plain. Then you shall have 
ease, and pleasure, and relief from care. Cast 
to the winds all your high notions, and come 
and live as others do. Come and be at rest. 
Bow down and worship me, the Prince of this 
World." 

How many have hearkened to that voice ! 
How many an earnest soul has grown weary in 
well doing, taken a look forward at the steepness 
of the way, and lain down at satan's feet! Let 
it not be so with any of us. It is a vain and 
delusive hope which satan holds out to you. 
He cannot give you rest. This world cannot 
satisfy you. Your soul craves something higher 
than they have to give. St. Augustine spoke 
for us all when he cried out, " Thou, O God, 
hast made us for thyself, and our heart is rest- 
less, until it find rest in thee." There is a true 
and tender voice which says, " Come unto Me, 
all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I 
will give you rest." The soul of man thirsts for 
the living God and hungers for the Bread of 
Life. God alone can satisfy its desires. ^ It is 
written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, 
and Him only shalt thou serve." x To the 
faithful soul His worship is sweet beyond all 
understanding and His service is perfect free- 

1 St. Matt. iv. 10; Deut. x. 20. 



50 Second Week — Saturday. 

dom. It grows in peace and blessedness as life 
wears on. It " brighteneth ever more and more 
unto the perfect day." It is to this blessed 
service that the Church calls us this Lent. She 
bids us, resisting and mastering all the tempta- 
tions of satan, go forward in the Royal Way of 
the Holy Cross, follow our Lord in the paths of 
righteousness, learning the rich lessons which 
He waits to teach, and growing day by day in 
love and loyalty to Him who is ,t once our 
human brother and our God. 



THIRD WEEK IN LENT. 

£0e (gla0f erg 6uer 1 0e Worfo 



MONDAY. 

IS THE WORLD OUR FRIEND OR OUR ENEMY? 



" Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with 
God 2* Whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the 
enemy of God." — St. James iv. 4. 

Let our meditation this week be upon the 
Christian's relation to the world. 

What do we mean by "the world? " What 
did our Blessed Lord mean by that phrase which 
was so often on His lips? He meant not simply 
this created universe in which we live; He did 
not mean the whole human race; He did not 
confine His meaning to the wicked followers of 
satan, the Prince of this World; and yet He 
meant something very real, very powerful, very 
dangerous. He had in mind the great worldly 
world, which lives for itself, practically ignores 
God, sets up its own standards of right and 
wrong, and attempts to dominate all human 



52 Third Week — Monday. 

life and to enslave every soul of man. Such 
was His meaning when, on the eve of His pas- 
sion, He rejoiced in spirit, foresaw His victories 
over the Cross and the tomb, and bid His disci- 
ples " Be of good cheer, I have overcome the 
world/ ' x 

Must we, like our Lord, " overcome the 
world? " Yes. The world is our enemy. 

i. There is much evil in the world. Many 
of its most cherished customs, much of its 
philosophy, most of its standards of right and 
wrong, a great deal of its life, are wrong in the 
sight of God. While hardly anything in the 
world is utterly bad, hardly anything is wholly 
good. Evil is present everywhere. As Chris- 
tians we must not blind ourselves to it, must re- 
sist it, must overcome it. We cannot be neutral 
in the warfare between good and evil which is 
ever going on. So far as the world is evil, we 
must be at enmity with the world, if we would be 
friends of God. 

2. But this is not all. We are forced into a 
position of antagonism, not only to the evil 
which is in the world, but to the world itself. 
It is attractive, seductive, absorbing, exacting. 
It wants the whole heart and life of man. It 
claims all his time and thought and care for 
itself. It demands his all. It does not recog- 
i St. John xv. 23* 



Is the World Our Friend or Our Enemy? 53 

nize any other world or any higher life. It has 
its own standards of morality, its own philoso- 
phy of life, its own way of looking at things. 
It cannot see beyond its own horizon, nor does 
it acknowledge that there is any " beyond." It 
is quite sufficient unto itself. 

To all this the Christian cannot submit. He 
takes a wider, loftier view. He is a citizen of 
two worlds — the seen and the unseen. He is 
in this world but not of it. He has learned 
how short, how uncertain, r how unsatisfying the 
world's life is at the best. He has found out 
that " the hope of the ungodly is like thistle- 
down that is blown away with the wind, like a 
thin froth that is driven away with the storm, 
like as the smoke which is dispersed here and 
there with a tempest, and passeth away as the 
remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a 
day." x The great realities of life are not 
material but spiritual. The things which shall 
endure are not those of the visible but of the 
invisible world. Human life is greater, 
grander than the world acknowledges it to be. 
To adopt the standards of this world, to live as 
though it were all, to confess its claims,would 
be for a Christian not only the height of 
absurdity but treason against God. Living 
for this world has been called "The Great 
i Wisdom v. 14. 



54 Third Week — Monday. 

Insanity." It is an insane thing for one who 
has eternity before him to act as if his span of 
life were at the utmost only three score years 
and ten. It is worse than insanity for one who 
has countless treasures from God given him in 
trust for himself and those who come after him, 
to let them all go and be lost in order that he 
may grasp a few gilded trinkets just for to-day. 
If we did not see it done every day, we should 
consider it absurd and impossible that those 
who "profess and call themselves Christians," 
should act for one moment as though this 
world were all. And yet so great are the 
fascinations of this world, such power has it to 
blind the eyes and harden the heart, that out 
of all mankind there have been but few who 
have learned to estimate it at its real worth 
and to live the larger life, only a few whose 
plans and hopes and fears are not centered in 
this world. And even those few are some- 
times very faint and faltering in their re- 
sistance to its claims, and it requires all 
the severe but loving discipline which God 
knows how to give to wean them from the 
world. 

Let us then face this question to-day: Are 
we friends of the world or of God ? There is 
enmity between the two, and we must make 
our choice. " Ye cannot serve God and mam- 



Is the World Our Friend or Our Enemy ? 5 5 

mon." x If we are to be friends of God, we 
must overcome the world, must resist its seduc- 
tions, must refuse to be dazzled by its glamour, 
must use it as not abusing it, must master it 
and not let it master us. Let us squarely face 
the issue. Worldliness is opposed to godliness. 
The worldly world is our enemy. It will blind 
us, drag us down, and ruin us, if possible. Its 
gross and carnal views of life are a deadly 
miasma which will poison and kill our souls. 
Its smiles are full of danger and deceit. Its 
friendship and its prizes cannot satisfy our 
souls. "All that is in the world, the lust of 
the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the 
pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the 
world. And the world passeth away, and the 
lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God 
abideth forever." 2 

1 St. Matt. vi. 24. 2 I. St. John ii. 16, 17. 



THIRD WEEK IN LENT. 



TUESDAY. 
OVERCOMING THE EVIL THAT IS IN THE WORLD. 



" Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." — 
Rom. xii. 21. 

We agreed yesterday that there is a vast mass 
of evil in the world which must be overcome. 
The one great, evident, awful fact about the 
world's life is that it is full of sin. The great 
world-religions ignore this side of human life, 
and provide nothing which can wash out the 
' ' damned spot ' ' of sin from the hands and 
hearts of man. It is only Christianity which 
undertakes the gigantic task of baptizing in the 
waters of life a world that is ' ' dead in trespasses 
and sins." It alone is based upon a recognition 
of the extent, the variety, the tenacity, the hor- 
ror of human sin. It, unlike them all, has a 
God who is of " purer eyes than to behold evil, 
and cannot look upon iniquity. , ' x It regards sin 

1 Habakkuk i. 13. 



Overcoming the Evil That is in the World, 5 7 

as a subtle, powerful, living antagonist, to be 
subdued and slain. Just as once " there was 
war in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting 
against the great dragon," so now there is war 
on earth between the followers of Christ and 
1 ' that old serpent, called the devil, and satan, 
which deceive th the whole world." x 

But how is this warfare to be carried on, and 
by what means is the victory to be gained. 
Shall we overcome the evil in the world by 
fiercely attacking it, by fighting doggedly and 
desperately against it, by violently uprooting it, 
by driving it out of the world and forcing it 
home to hell ? 

Yes and no. Let us learn a lesson here from 
our Lord. One of the chief purposes for which 
He came into this world as man was that He 
might overcome the evil that was in it. How 
did He proceed? Did He begin at once a fierce 
crusade against all the evil powers of the world ? 
Did He attack evil wherever it showed its head ? 
Did He bring to bear His supernatural powers 
to annihilate it and banish it from the world ? 
No. He rebuked some of its grosser and more 
awful forms when He came face to face with 
them. He warned mankind of the results of 
sin. But He did not undertake to cast out the 
ievils all at once. What He did was this. He 

i Rev. xii. 7-9. 



58 Third Week — Tuesday. 

lived a quiet, hidden life of spotless purity, free 
from all taint of sin, without even the slightest 
appearance of evil — a perfect life. And that 
was all. He simply set in the midst of this evil 
world a holy life, and left it to do its work. 
And yet He said, " I have overcome the world." 
He knew that the good which He had brought 
into the world would overcome the evil. He 
said with confidence, "I, if I be lifted up, will 
draw all men unto me." J 

Here, then, we have our Divine Ensample of 
the way in which we are to overcome the evil 
in the world; not by forcibly emptying the 
world of evil, but by quietly filling it with good. 
Our work is not so much negative as positive, 
not so much destructive as constructive. What 
we have to do is not so much to batter down the 
evil as to build up the good. 

This is true both of the Christian Church as a 
whole and of every individual member of the 
same. 

1. It is true of the Church. She must work 
as God works. She must be patient, wise, and 
confident in her strength. Her chief work is, 
not to uproot the rank weeds of evil, but to 
plant and water the seeds of good. She is not 
bound at once to reform every abuse, right every 
wrong, and banish all evil from the world. She 

1 St. John xii. 32. 



Overcoming the Evil That is in the World. 59 

must not "strive, nor cry, nor lift up her 
voice in the streets," in noisy resistance to 
her enemies. Her mightiest works, like those 
of God in nature, will be done in silence and 
secrecy. Her most splendid victories will be 
wrought by the weapons of faith and prayer and 
suffering by the quiet multiplication of good 
until evil is overcome. 

2. It is so with every soul If we should drive 
out the evil and leave our spiritual house swept 
and garnished, but empty, our last state would 
be worse than the first. We should soon have 
seven devils instead of one. Our only safety 
lies in the multiplication of the good that is in 
us until the evil is permanently crowded out. 
Many an earnest Christian rouses himself as 
Lent comes round for a desperate struggle 
against his besetting sins, concentrates all his 
energies upon them, and fights them manfully. 
This is well, but it is not all he has to do. His 
Lent must have its positive side. He must not 
only break off bad habits, he must build up good 
ones in their place. He must not only mortify 
his flesh, he must feed his soul upon the Word 
of God. He must not only forsake satan, he 
must "draw nigh to God." He ought not to 
dissipate his energies in violent combat when it 
would have been wiser to expend them in pro- 
viding food and nourishment for his soul. There 



60 Third Week — Tuesday. 

is a judicious economy in Christian living 
whose maxim is not, " Drive out the evil/' but 
" Bring in the good." Genuine moral good- 
ness is the only power which can overcome evil. 
The swiftest and surest way to banish the powers 
of evil from the heart is to reinforce and fortify 
the powers of good until they are strong enough 
to win for themselves a decisive victory. 

Let us, then, labor quietly but very dili- 
gently to fill our own lives, our community, our 
Church, and the world (so far as we can) with 
pure and positive goodness, and leave the re- 
sults to God. When evil confronts us, let us 
resist it bravely with such weapons as God 
gives. But let our chief reliance be placed 
in the grace of God which will enable us to 
" overcome evil with good." 



THIRD WEEK IN LENT. 



WEDNESDAY. 

OVERCOMING THE WORLD BY FAITH. 



" This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our 
faith." — /. St. John v. 4. 

During the remainder of this week let us 
study how the fascinations of this world are to 
be overcome, how the heart of man may be 
lifted up out of the visible into the invisible 
world. 

This beautiful world, which has so much 
to charm the eye, to occupy the mind, to 
delight the heart, so much in it that is good 
along with the evil, tempts mankind upon 
its good as well as on its evil side. The 
good that is in the world is almost as danger- 
ous as the evil is. The innocent enjoyments 
of human life, the pleasures of society, 
the engrossing activities of the business world, 
human friendship and family ties, all that 



62 Third Week — Wednesday. 

attracts and delights us here below, all these 
have their dangers for the soul. We are 
permitted by God to have them, to enjoy them. 
But they are not all ; they are only foretastes of 
what God has in store for us. They are like 
the object lessons of a kindergarten school, to 
educate us to live a larger life, to fit us for a 
higher sphere. We must not grow too much 
attached to them, must not cling to them too 
long, must recognize them as only a means to 
an end. We must not be like men and women 
who insist on lingering in the kindergarten 
under the impression that it is real life. We 
must realize the littleness, the transitoriness, 
the unreality of this life considered simply in 
itself, and grasp the great fact that " the things 
which are seen are temporal, but the things 
which are not seen are eternal. ' ' x 

We must learn to " set our affections on things 
above, not on things on the earth.* ' 2 We must 
be emancipated from all low, and narrow, and 
merely worldly views of human life. 

Now, how is this to be done? It can only be 
by getting the eyes wide open to spiritual 
things, by getting a firm grasp of eternal truths, 
by gaining motives which will exalt, and dignify, 
and enlarge our life out of worldliness into other 
worldliness. There is but one thing that can do 

i II. Cor. iv. 1 8. 2 Col. iii. 2. 



Overcoming the World by Faith. 63 

this, namely, the Christian Faith. Grasp that, 
receive it into your mind, hold it in your heart, 
work it out in your life, and you have overcome 
the world. You have introduced into your life 
principles which will make it unworldly. You 
have by one blow broken the bonds of worldli- 
ness and emancipated your soul. Every one 
who has truly held the Christian Faith has over- 
come the world. That faith is an active prin- 
ciple which elevates and ennobles human life, 
and deals the death blow to all that is of the 
earth earthy. It is slowly, but surely, trans- 
forming the world. It sets up this triumphant 
claim, " The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness 
thereof." x 

Thus it consecrates and hallows this world 
and all that is in it, and converts them to sacred 
and unearthly uses. 

This was true even of the rudimentary and im- 
perfect faith of God's people under the Old Cove- 
nant. Read the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews and see how it ' 'subdued kingdoms, 
wrought righteousness, obtained promises, 
stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the vio- 
lence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, 
waxed valiant in fight, turned to flight the 
armies of the aliens," and won countless 
victories over the world, and then tell me 
1 1. Cor. x. 26. 



64 Third Week — Wednesday. 

if the Christian Faith must not do all this 
and more. Tell me if it hath not power to 
wean man from the world, to satisfy and save 
his soul. 

The victory of our faith over the world is sure 
and it is swift. When once that faith is grasped, 
the victory is won. Let the eternal realities 
dawn upon the soul, let the life become hid with 
Christ in God; " only belie ve," and you have 
shattered the world's weapons with one blow. 
Take unto you the strong and well-rounded, and 
brightly polished shield of the Christian Faith, 
and your victory is assured, it is already won. 
The Christian armour is not out of date. The 
weapons of the spiritual warfare have not 
changed. The shield of faith, which all the 
triumphant saints of God have used, will protect 
us and save us as it did them. The dint of past 
conflict which it bears only assures us of its 
power to repel our present foes. It will quench 
all the glittering fascinations of the world, and 
be found proof against them at every point. 
Behind it the Christian is in another world. He 
"endures, as seeing Him who is invisible." 
However fiercely the battle rages round, he is 
calm and undismayed. Amidst its din and noise 
he is at peace, for his soul is stayed upon God, 
and he does not fear what man can do unto him. 
" He will not be afraid of any evil tidings, for 



Overcoming the World by Faith. 65 

his heart standeth fast and believeth in the 
Lord." ■ 

Here, then, is the divine method of overcom- 
ing the world. In so far as we follow it we 
shall come off conquerors, and more than con- 
querors in the end. The reason why we do not 
gain an immediate victory is because of the 
littleness of our faith. We need to go back to 
apostolic times and learn from holy men of old 
how to hold the Christian Faith in all its purity 
and power. Let us resolve to-day to strive for 
a reasonable, a religious, a living faith. Let us 
be satisfied with nothing short of the Holy 
Catholic and Apostolic Faith firmly grasped, 
implicitly believed, and held as our most 
precious heritage, and then the creeds of the 
Church will become our songs of victory. 

1 Psalm cxii. 7. 



THIRD WEEK IN LENT, 
(gtasf erg <£>t>eir t$t Worf b, 

THURSDAY. 

NONCONFORMITY TO THE WORLD. 



" Be not conformed to this world." — Romans xii. 2. 

Closely akin to our meditation of yesterday 
is that which we are to make to-day. 

When we w T ere baptized we made a solemn 
vow and covenant with God that we would 
renounce the world. We did not mean that 
henceforth we would have nothing to do with 
the world. We meant that we would renounce 
its authority, and repudiate its claim to rule in 
our hearts and lives. We meant that we would 
live, not according to the standards of the world, 
but according to the ensample of a godly life 
given us by our Blessed Lord. 

We did not renounce the beautiful in nature 
and art. God means us to love and enjoy all 
that is beautiful, in so far as it is good and true. 
The natural world is a great "pictorial Bible " 
in which, no less than in God's written Word, is 



' Nonconformity to the World. 67 

revealed the mind of Christ. " The invisible 
things of Him from the creation of the world 
are clearly seen, being understood by the things 
that are made, even His eternal power and 
God-head." " 

If only we have eyes to see, the material 
universe can teach us much about God and His 
workings in the world. Likewise human art, if 
it is fine and high, being inspired by the Holy 
Ghost, is not to be renounced. 

We did not renounce the love of humanity. 
God wills us to love our fellowmen — to think 
highly of man as man. Mankind is made in the 
image of the Most High God, redeemed by the 
eternal sacrifice of Christ, ordained to the most 
glorious destiny. Even in his degradation and 
his deepest sin, he is not to be renounced. We 
are bound, as the children of God, to have a 
warm, true love of humanity. 

What then did we renounce ? The sovereignty 
of this world. We determined that the powers 
of this world should not govern us. We affirmed 
that we are "citizens of a better country, that 
is, an heavenly." 

The world is very lordly in its demands for 
our allegiance. It has set up its own stand- 
ards of life to which it expects us to conform. 
It has but scant courtesy for any principles of 

1 Romans i. 20. 



68 Third Week — Thursday. 

human conduct but its own. It smiles, sneers, 
scoffs at any one who violates its rules of policy. 
It regards any deviation from its customs as 
something like insanity. It claims the right to 
direct and dominate the whole life of man. 

The influence of the world is a very subtle 
and pervasive thing. The great city of London 
generates an atmosphere of its own. It fills the 
air with fog and smoke and dust, so that the 
atmosphere of London is almost as different 
from that of the woods and fields as darkness 
is from light. It permeates everything and 
colors the whole life of the metropolis. Just so 
" the world" creates an atmosphere of its own 
which enshrouds and colors all human life. We 
breathe it in with every breath. It creeps like 
a miasma into the soul. It has marvelous power 
to blind the eyes, and clog the mind, and color 
all our thoughts of God. Occasionally men rise 
above it and catch a glimpse of the clear sky 
of truth, and see the great lights which God 
has kindled there. But for the most part their 
whole life is seen through this hazy atmosphere 
of worldliness. 

Let us notice some of its characteristics : 
i. It clings close to earth. There is nothing 
elevating about it. It is of the earth earthy. It 
cannot rise above the lower levels of life and 
conduct. 



Nonconformity to the World. 69 

2. It forms alow estimate of human life, makes 
it only a thing of to-day, robs it of its highest 
dignity, and leaves it no longer life, an exist- 
ence and nothing more. 

3. It hides God from human eyes, belittles Him, 
distorts His splendid qualities, dwindles Him 
into a cold abstraction, a " deity/' an impersonal 
" force that makes for righteousness." 

4. It deceives the spiritual sight, magnifies 
the things of this world out of their true pro- 
portion, and exaggerates their real worth. 

As Christians we cannot conform to this 
worldly world, we must not be misled by it. 
Our views of life are to be got not from it, but 
from God. Our religious principles are higher 
than its rules of policy. Our Rock is not as 
its rock. Our ways are not as its ways. We live 
in a different atmosphere, one created for us 
by the Christian Church, a purer, healthier, 
brighter environment. We are governed by 
higher motives; we take larger views of life; 
we cannot always bow to public opinion; we 
must often appeal from the low and hasty 
judgment of the world to the just judgment of 
that Great Day when God shall be all in all. 
Unless such is our attitude towards the world, 
we are Christians only in name. If we are 
Christians indeed and in truth, we have deliber- 
ately, definitely, and decisively resolved within 



JO Third Week — Thursday. 

ourselves that we are not to be conformed to 
the groveling standards of " the world," but 
governed by the eternal principles of the Gospel 
of God; we have renounced the world as our 
ruler and our judge, and henceforth will cleave 
only unto God. 

Let us deepen within us to-day the sense 
of our separation from the world, and reconse- 
crate our whole self to God. 



THIRD WEEK IN LENT. 



FRIDAY. 

CRUCIFYING THE WORLD. 



" God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto 
the world." — Gal. vi. 14. 

There were some of the first Christians who 
felt ashamed of the death to which their Master 
had been put. Not so St. Paul. To him it 
seemed altogether glorious. For him the Cross 
was the central feature, the dominant figure in 
all human history. He gloried in it above all 
things. It seemed to the world unutterably 
shocking and shameful. To him it seemed the 
most splendid thing in all the universe. It was 
a tremendous object lesson of the love of God. 
It was the great power of God unto salvation. 
It was the means by which Christ would draw 
all men unto Him. Its outstretched arms would 
gather in the whole world. He foresaw how it 
would "tower o'er the wrecks of time/' how 



7 2 Third Week — Friday. 

"all the light of sacred story would gather 
round its head sublime. " All his views of life 
and death and eternity, were influenced by the 
Cross. It seemed never to be absent from his 
thoughts. 

When, therefore, he undertook to define his 
relations to the world, he could only see them 
in the light of the Cross, he could not think of 
them apart from the great transaction upon 
Calvary, he could only describe them in terms 
of the Cross. His language is somewhat foreign 
to the spirit of our age, but it is the mother 
tongue of the Christian heart. His words are 
strikingly vivid and significant. 

Looking first upon the world's side of those 
relationships, he exclaims, " The world is cruci- 
fied unto me." What does He mean by that? 

When Christ hung upon the Cross, the world 
thought it was condemning and crucifying Him. 
It was really condemning and crucifying itself. It 
was the world that led Him to the Cross and hung 
Him there, that drove the cruel nails, that chal- 
lenged Him to come down from the Cross, that 
surged round its base and gloried in his shame. 
It was the world, not the Christ, who was on 
trial, who was condemned, who was eternally 
disgraced that day. St. Paul sees with the eye 
of faith, over against the three crosses of Cal- 
vary, another cross, a towering shameful cross 



Crucifying the World. 73 

on which a wicked world, dishonoured, disgraced, 
and doomed, has hung itself. He can never for- 
get that his Lord "was in the world, and the 
world was made by Him, and the world knew 
Him not." x 

It hated Him, rejected Him, did its best to 
destroy Him utterly. It strove to judge Him, 
but only judged itself. It convicted itself of 
the most awful wrongs which were ever done in 
heaven or earth. Since that day St. Paul could 
only think of the world as a self-condemned 
criminal gibbeted before the eyes of angels and 
men, a culprit whose base and bloody sin has 
found him out and brought its due reward, a 
malefactor whose evil purposes have been 
exposed and who is no longer to be feared. 
Henceforth, he regarded it and feared it no 
more than he would a condemned criminal 
writhing on a cross. The world was crucified 
to him. 

But more. He was " crucified to the world." 
He was on the Cross with Christ. He viewed 
the world from the standpoint of the Cross of 
Christ. It had lost its charms, forfeited its 
claims. Its glamour was gone; he had nothing 
more to hope or to fear from it ; he had done with 
the world. What did he care for its pleasures, 
its prizes, its good opinion, its sneers, or its 

i St. John i. io. 



74 Third Week — Friday. 

scorn? What could it offer to him who gloried 
in the Cross of Christ and believed it to be the 
throne of glory everlasting? The world was 
forever crucified to him, and he to the world. 

Strong and shocking as St. Paul's language 
may seem to us, it is perfectly true. The 
world did crucify Christ, and it would do so 
again, if He came amongst us in the flesh to-day. 

It is the same world, only a little better for 
nineteen centuries of Christianity. The only 
point from which the Christian can see the world 
in its true light is the Cross of Calvary. If he is 
a true Christian, he must see it from that point 
of view. He is crucified with Christ. He cannot 
forget the attitude of the world towards the 
Cross, cannot forget that the world made the 
Cross. He looks down from his Cross of glory 
where he hangs with Christ and sees the world 
on its cross, its cross of shame, and would not 
change places for all that the world has to give. 
He glories in his Cross. 

Have we learned so to do? Are we looking 
at the world this Lent from the vantage-ground 
of the Cross? We must learn to do so, if we are 
to be joint-heirs with Christ in the triumphs He 
has won. We must identify ourselves with 
Him and look at the world from His point of 
view: the highest, the truest, the best stand- 
point from which to estimate its real worth. 



Crucifying the World. 75 

Let us to-day earnestly beseech God to give us 
the spirit of St. Paul, to open our eyes, so that 
we may see how true it is that in the eternal 
sacrifice of the Cross the world is crucified unto 
us, and we unto the world. 



THIRD WEEK IN LENT. 
(gtasf erg &t>er f 0e Worf b. 



SATURDAY. 

THE PROFIT AND LOSS OF WORLDLINESS. 



" What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and 
lose his own soul ? or what shall a man give in exchange for 
his soul ? " — St. Matt, xvu 26. 

Here is a plain practical question which 
ought to be driven home to every human heart. 
Our Blessed Lord did not deal in fine-spun theo- 
ries, or dreamy sentiments. His words were 
the plainest, the directest, the profoundest which 
have ever sounded in human ears. Beside 
them all human speech is hollow, vain, and 
powerless. Study the words of the Lord Jesus 
and you will be more and more amazed at their 
marvelous insight, depth, and simplicity. In 
those which we have before us to-day He puts 
a searching question to the practical people 
of all ages, and especially to those of these 
money-getting days. It is a problem in profit 



The Profit and Loss of Worldliness. J J 

and loss which ought to appeal powerfully to 
the men of our time. With matchless energy, 
and tremendous industry, they are developing 
the material resources of this world, accumu- 
lating wealth, enlarging the boundaries of 
human knowledge, and pushing progress into 
undreamed-of developments. They take a busi- 
ness-like view of everything. They ask, " What 
does it cost? What is it worth? Is there any 
profit in it? " By this standard everything is 
weighed. Life is too short and too strenuous 
to be wasted upon things which have no profit 
in them. Even the amusements and pleasures 
of men are made to contribute to the main 
chance or sacrificed in its pursuit. Everything 
that claims a share in our modern life is chal- 
lenged by the question, what is it worth? Men 
of the world ask this question ceaselessly. 
They bring literature, art, invention, conduct, 
religion, — everything to this test. 

In all this they are right, that is, if their 
standards of judgment are right. God does the 
same. He tolerates nothing useless. There is 
not a superfluous atom in His whole universe. He 
comes to the busy men of to-day and says, " You 
are quite right. Like you, I ask to know what 
everything is worth? It is the part of prudence, 
not only to ask, but to know, what things are 
worth. I come to you and I put this question 



78 Third Week — Saturday. 

to you. Answer me — the things of this world 
for which you are toiling, suffering, dying, what 
are they worth? You have two great enter- 
prises before you: to gain the things of this 
world, and to win the things of the world to 
come. Which are worth the most to you? Are 
this world's goods the chief things; what is their 
value compared with the life of the soul; if you 
must choose between the two, which is worth 
the most ; is it wise, is it reasonable, is it right 
for you to seek the one and sacrifice the other? 
The things of this world are many of them good, 
attractive, enjoyable; but are they the supreme 
things of life? Is there anything higher and 
more precious than they?" Here is the great 
problem of life, the vast responsibility of choice 
for every one. Which shall it be — " the lust 
of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the 
pride of life," or the higher " life that is hid with 
Christ in God? " Shall we gain the good things 
of this world, or the good things of God? Here 
is our alternative — an eternal life of worldliness, 
begun here and continued in the world to come ; 
or an eternal life of Godliness, of union and com- 
munion with God, commenced here and consum- 
mated in the other world. There are a higher 
and a lower life. Which ought you as a reason- 
able being to choose? Suppose you could gain 
the whole world, realize all its joys, and grasp 



The Profit and Loss of Worldliness. 79 

its prizes every one : how much are they worth, 
how long can you keep them, will they satisfy 
you, will you be content with them? Suppose, 
on the other hand, you are called upon to give 
up all that the world has given you, can you 
do it, what would be the effect, will the loss be 
irreparable, will all happiness then be at an 
end for you? 

Here is where the world makes one of its 
worst mistakes. When a man, by some error 
or misfortune in business, loses all his worldly 
goods, he cries out that he is " ruined, ,, and the 
world with pity echoes the cry. But is it so? 
Is the light all gone out of his life? It is true 
that he will have to live in a more humble 
style, his wife may be forced to retire from 
society, his children may be denied some lux- 
uries. His pride is humbled, his extrava- 
gance and luxurious living are at an end. But 
he himself may be saved. That deep experience 
may develop all his manlier qualities, prove 
how true and loving his wife is, and rescue his 
children from a life of pampered self-indulgence. 
The man who is really ruined may be the one 
who is left in possession of all his wealth, and 
whom the world calls prosperous, while the secret 
canker of pride and avarice is eating out his heart. 

But cannot we have both the higher life of 
the soul and the good things of this world? 



80 Third Week — Saturday. 

Yes, perhaps so. God has promised that, if we 
seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and his right- 
eousness, all other things needful in this world 
shall be given us. But that is not the question. 
The real question is this: Can a wise, practical, 
sensible person permit himself to become so 
absorbed in pursuing the prizes of this world 
as to utterly neglect and ignore the higher life 
of his soul? Is there anything which, in a true 
view of human destiny, can compare with the 
priceless worth of an immortal soul? 

Let us take this question home with us to-day, 
ponder it well in our hearts, and answer it truth- 
fully to ourselves and to God. 



FOURTH WEEK IN LENT. 



MONDAY. 
THE SCHOOL OF LIFE. 



"It is good for me that I have been in trouble that I ma}! 
learn thy statutes." — Psalm cxix. 71. 

When we look out over the face of human 
life we find it full of adversity. We are con- 
fronted by the dark problem of pain. We find 
this life full of ups and downs, of reverses and 
calamities. We are almost ready to cry out 
with holy Job, "Man is born unto trouble, as 
the sparks fly upward." \ We ponder all this in 
our hearts, and are driven to ask, How can 
our good God permit it? " He is gracious and 
merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, 
and repenteth Him of the evil." 2 And yet the 
world which He has made is full of trouble, and 
man whom He has created is a constant victim 
of adversity. How can we reconcile the suffer- 
ings of mankind with the doctrine of God's 
good Providence ? 

1 Job v. 7. 2 Joel ii. 13. 



82 Fourth Week — Monday. 

i. First we must remind ourselves that the 
troubles which so grievously afflict humankind 
do not originate from God. He did not send 
them into the world ; they are not a part of his 
creative plans. They were brought into the 
world by man, and are the result of his fall from 
the state of grace in which God created him. 
They are the inevitable consequence of his sin. 
They result directly from the errors of his free 
will, and are the necessary incidents of his wan- 
dering from God. 

2. But there is a counter truth which we 
must not fail to grasp. God turns all the 
adversities with which man afflicts himself to 
good account. He converts them to his own 
uses. Even "the fierceness of man shall turn 
to His praise.'' z God uses all human adversity 
to wean us from the world, draw us to Himself, 
and prepare us for a higher life. 

A clever writer has recently published a book 
entitled the " School of Life," in which he 
shows at considerable length how the discipline 
of adversity is made use of by God to prepare 
us for the world to come. It is a perfectly true 
view of life. This world is an educational in- 
stitution, a training-school into which our wise 
and loving Father puts us all for a time to learn 
the great lessons of life. Our Great Teacher 

1 Psalm lxxvi. io. 



The School of Life. 83 

is the Lord Jesus Christ, who teaches, not as 
the Scribes and Pharisees of human philosophy, 
but " with authority." His assistant teachers 
are the manifold vicissitudes of daily life. 
Every crisis of our experience in this world, 
every trial, every trouble, every calamity is 
made use of by God in His all-wise providence 
to help on the training of our souls. 

Now in the School of Life what is the chief 
lesson which we have to learn ? Is it not the 
hard old lesson of detachment from this world 
and union and communion with God ? 

Mankind is a prodigal race which has for- 
saken God, gone its own way, forgotten the 
pure pleasures of its Father's House, and is 
wasting its substance with riotous living. Some- 
times in quiet hours there comes a faint gleam 
of heavenly light across its chosen path to 
remind it of its Father and its Home, but for 
most part it goes its way forgetful of its rich 
inheritance and careless of any higher life. It 
is so surfeited in the gross enjoyment of carnal 
lusts that it has lost all taste for spiritual things 
and become " earthly, sensual, devilish." 

How shall this fallen race be won back to 
God ? How shall it be weaned from worldly 
lusts, how shall it be taught the worthlessness 
of all that this world can give without God, 
how shall it be made to feel the difference 



84 Fourth Week — Monday. 

between the license of self-will and the " per- 
fect freedom ' ' of the life of service it has left 
behind ? There is but one way. It must have 
the discipline of adversity. It must learn by 
bitter experience that man cannot find hap- 
piness apart from God, that worldliness cannot 
satisfy the soul, that there is a great famine in 
the land which he has chosen for his home, a 
famine of all which can feed his real life. He 
must find the pleasures of life failing him one 
by one, until at last he is reduced to the swinish 
husks which cannot dull the hunger of his soul. 
Then it may be that erring man will waken to 
some sense of his waywardness and loss, and 
say to himself, "I will arise and go to my 
Father, and will say unto Him, Father, I have 
sinned against heaven and before thee, and am 
no more worthy to be called thy son; make me 
as one of thy hired servants" and take me 
home. 1 

Such is the great lesson which most of us 
have to learn in the School of Life, the lesson 
of detachment from the world and loving union 
with our good God. Many of us are but slow 
of heart to learn it, and our loving Father has 
to watch and wait while we bring a multitude 
of sorrows on ourselves before we are ready 
to turn to Him and find rest for our souls. The 

1 St. Luke xv. 18, 19. 



The School of Life. 85 

uncertainties and disappointments of life are 
God's monitors to point us to Heaven, which is 
our Home. All the ills that flesh is heir to are 
permitted by Him to show us our helplessness 
and drive us to Him for help. Every calamity 
which sends a shudder through the hearts of 
men ought to show us how frail is the hand of 
man and fix our thoughts upon God. Our 
living and loving Lord has his gentler lessons 
for us all, but our wayward hearts often force 
Him to inflict on us the stern discipline of adver- 
sity and teach us the hard lessons of expe- 
rience before he can draw His erring children 
home. 

Let us think upon these things this week, and 
let us resolve to-day that we will try to master 
the great lessons which we are set to learn in 
the school of adversity. 



FOURTH WEEK IN LENT. 
£0e (gtasf erg <£toer $&Demf g. 



TUESDAY. 

BY POVERTY OF SPIRIT. 



"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of 
heaven. — St. Matt. v. 3. 

We said yesterday that Jesus is the Great 
Teacher in the School of Life. Near the begin- 
ning of His earthly ministry He went up into a 
mountain, apart from the distractions of human 
philosophy, and taught the world what it most 
needs to know. His Sermon on the Mount is 
the concentrated essence of all wisdom, human 
and divine. Let us try this week to learn some 
of the great Lessons of Life which it contains. 

To-day let us consider the first beatitude, 
" Blessed are the poor in spirit." 

Who are they? 

Of all the results of human experience none 
is more repulsive to the natural man, and yet 
none is more forcibly brought home to him than 
the knowledge of the limitations of the life 



By Poverty of Spirit. 87 

which he lives in this world. Man plans great 
things, and cannot bring them to pass. He 
toils incessantly, and finds that he has laboured 
but in vain. He rises early, and goes late 
to rest, and eats the bread of carefulness, 
and is nothing profited in the end. He brings 
his highest powers of mind and body to bear 
in the battle of life and is defeated after all. 
He exhausts the cleverest devices of worldly 
foresight and policy, and all to no effect. 
His most far-reaching and best-laid schemes 
are brought to nought. He is baffled, beat- 
en, thwarted, humiliated, disgraced, brought 
down to the ground, again and again. What 
does it all mean? What ought he to learn from 
it? If he will but see it, the lesson is very plain. 
He ought to learn his own littleness; he should 
see how utterly insignificant, and powerless, and 
worthless he is . It may take a lifetime to teach 
him this wholesome truth. His proud spirit of 
self-love and self-confidence is a slow learner in 
the school of experience. But the lessons given 
him there are not wanting in number and plain- 
ness, and are nicely adapted to his needs. God 
lets us fall and fail hopelessly until we learn not 
to trust ourselves, until at last we learn our 
utter helplessness. The first and best knowledge 
for every human soul, the beginning of wisdom, 
is the perception of its own pitiful weakness and 



88 Fourth Week — Tuesday. 

insignificance in the vast Universe of God. No 
soul is fit to begin life in earnest, to enter into 
its great inheritance, until it is conscious of its 
absolute poverty, and has fallen down in spir- 
itual nakedness at the feet of the Most High 
God. "Verily, I say unto you, except ye be 
converted, and become as little children, ye 
shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." z 
When the soul has learned its own destitution 
and frailty and faultiness and sin, has emptied 
out all the pride and self-confidence with which 
. it had been filled, and has turned humbly from 
itself to God, then it is ready to enter into His 
spiritual kingdom and be at rest in Him. This 
is the poverty of spirit taught by our Lord and 
His assistant teachers, the failures and vicissi- 
tudes of human experience. Blessed is he 
who can say, " Lord, I am not highminded, I 
have no proud looks. I do not exercise myself 
in great matters which are too high for me. 
But I refrain my soul and keep it low, like as a 
child that is weaned from his mother, yea, my 
soul is even as a weaned child." 2 

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is 
the kingdom of heaven." What does this prom- 
ise mean? It means that they are ready for, 
and entitled to, an entrance into the great spir- 
itual Kingdom of God, the universal Church of 

1 St. Matt, xviii, 3. 2 Psalm cxxxi. 1-3. 



By Poverty of Spirit. 89 

Christ. They are able to receive and enjoy all 
which the Church has to give them. Her Gos- 
pel, her sacraments, her ministries of grace, 
her superhuman and unworldly life, her sweet 
and strong relationships are theirs. By reason 
of their conversion into the spirit of Christ and 
new birth into God's great family, they are 
become " heirs of God, and joint heirs with 
Christ. " * 

They need not wait till some distant time to 
enter into their inheritance ; it is theirs here and 
now. For them the heavenly life is already 
begun. They have already taken hold upon that 
eternal life of union with God, which, beginning 
here and now, will go on widening and deepen- 
ing and brightening eternally. 

Blessed are the poor in spirit who have been 
always so, who have never lost the simplicity 
and trust and humility of a little child, who 
have always walked close with God, and have no 
need to turn to him in weeping, fasting, and 
praying amidst the darkening shadows of a 
weary and wasted life. 

Blessed also are the poor in spirit, who, in 
the stern school of adversity, have learned to 
know the littleness of man, the greatness of 
God, and are content to lie like beggars by the 
Beautiful Gate of the temple of God. 

1 Romans viii. 17. 



9° Fourth Week — Tuesday, 

Lord, help us that " the sense of our weakness 
may add strength to our faith, and seriousness 
to our repentance" ; make us to feel our spir- 
itual poverty and nakedness ; and turn us, even 
if need be, through the valley of humiliation, 
into the paths of righteousness, for thy Name's 
sake. 



FOURTH WEEK IN LENT. 



WEDNESDAY. 

BY MEEKNESS. 



" Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." — 
•Ef. Matt. v. J. 

Meekness is a virtue little appreciated nowa- 
days and much misunderstood. The world 
admires those who are prompt in their own 
defense. It is inclined to regard meekness as a 
weak, womanish sort of quality, which is too 
timid, too pliant, too passive to maintain its 
own rights, and so lets them go by default. 
But meekness and weakness are two very dif- 
ferent things. Meekness is the perfection of 
strength. The meekest man is not the weakest 
but the strongest man. Let us take two exam- 
ples. 

i. Who is the meekest character in all 
human history ? Jesus Christ. He said of 
Himself, (< I am meek and lowly in heart." * 

i St. Matt. xi. 29. 



92 Fourth Week — Wednesday. 

Was the character of Christ a weak character ? 
Was it not the perfection of manly strength ? 
He held proud priests and Pharisees at bay and 
denounced them to their face. The poor flocked 
to him for shelter as to " the shadow of a great 
rock in a weary land." He drove out with 
righteous and resistless fury those whom He 
found profaning His Father's House. He en- 
dured with splendid fortitude the scourge, the 
crown of thorns, the Cross. He made the 
Roman soldiers quail before Him in Geth- 
semane, and filled Caiaphas and Tilate with 
trembling on their judgment thrones. He was 
the pattern of meekness, but he was at the 
same time the Lion of the Tribe of Judah. 

2. Who was the meekest of men ? Moses. 
Was his a weak character ? Think what he 
did. For the love of God he mastered all the 
temptations of Egypt and " chose rather to 
suffer affliction with the people of God than to 
enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, esteem- 
ing the reproach of Christ greater riches than 
the treasures of Egypt." 1 He left wealth, 
honour, and the prospect of the most splendid 
of kingly thrones behind him and led a horde of 
fugitive slaves into a wild wilderness at the 
command of God. Again and again he made 
the mightiest monarch of the earth to tremble 
i Hebrews xi. 25, 



By Meekness. 93 

on his throne and humbled him to the dust. 
He displayed the most splendid generalship 
which the world has ever seen. Nothing could 
daunt him. He knew no fear and acknowl- 
edged no defeat. And yet he was the meekest 
of men. 

Meekness, then, is not weakness but strength, 
solid and sublime strength of character. It is 
based upon absolute confidence. The meek 
man is so sure of himself, so sure of God, that 
he can endure anything. He knows in whom 
he has put his trust and he will not be afraid, 
"though the earth be moved, and though the 
hills be carried into the midst of the sea, though 
the waters thereof rage and swell, and though 
the mountains shake at the tempest of the 
same." 1 He " endures as seeing him who is 
invisible." 2 His heart is stayed upon God and 
he will not fear what man can do unto him. 
He knows that God is for him. Who can be 
against him ? He is at one with God and feels 
underneath him the everlasting arms. He sees 
behind the pillar of cloud and of fire the High 
and Holy One who inhabiteth eternity. "The 
waves of the sea are mighty and rage horribly, 
but yet the Lord who dwelleth on high is 
mightier." 3 Therefore he is serene and undis- 
1 Psalm xlvi. 2, 3. 2 Hebrews xi. 27. 

3 Psalm xciii. 5. 



94 Fourth Week — Wednesday \ 

mayed amidst all the world's storms. There- 
fore he " suffereth long and is kind, envieth 
not, vaunteth not himself, is not puffed up, 
doth not behave himself unseemly, seeketh not 
his own, is not easily provoked, beareth all 
things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, 
endure th all things." * There is no passion in 
him, in quietness and confidence is found his 
strength. His "soul truly waiteth still upon 
God." 2 

" Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit 
the earth." What does this promise mean ? Does 
it say that all which this world has to give shall 
ultimately be given them? No. This, like most 
of our Lord's promises, is spiritual. They shall 
inherit that " new heaven and new earth wherein 
dwelleth righteousness." 3 But even in this 
world they shall begin to enjoy their reward. 
Nothing mars the happiness of this world so 
much as those exacting ambitions and turbu- 
lent passions whose sway in the heart is most 
opposed to meekness. They who have cast 
off the dominion of avarice and hatred, and set 
themselves free from care and anxiety, these 
grow daily in calmness and serenity and spiritual 
strength, are more and more detached from this 
world, more and more closely joined to God. 

1 1. Cor. xiii. 4-7. 2 Psalm lxii. I. 

3 II. St. Peter iii. 13. 



By Meekness. 95 

Having surrendered themselves wholly to Him, 
they are not too much disturbed when adversi- 
ties come upon them. They simply say, "It 
is the Lord, let Him do what seemeth Him 
good." 1 They receive all trouble and adver- 
sity as something permitted in God's good 
providence, endurable by His help, and con- 
vertible into new spiritual strength of character. 
They have gained the mastery over adversity 
and have already in anticipation come off more 
than conquerors in the battle of life. 

Let us ask of God to-day, that He will 
strengthen our faith in Him, and give us a 
possession that "is not corruptible, even the 
ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is 
in the sight of God of great price." 2 

1 1. Sam. iii. 18. a I. St. Peter iii. 4. 



FOURTH WEEK IN LENT. 
£0e (glaaferg <£>t>er (gfiwtBitig. 



THURSDAY. 
BY MOURNING. 



" Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." — 
St. Matt. v. 4. 

The world does not think so. It regards the 
sorrows and losses of human life as a grievous 
burden, often almost too heavy to be borne. It 
never says, "It is good for me that I have been 
in trouble." It considers every bereavement as a 
calamity, and does not discern the uses of adver- 
sity. It blames God for permitting the exist- 
ence of sorrow in His world. 

But the world's view is a shallow and short- 
sighted one. It forgets that sorrow was not in 
the world as God made it, but was brought in 
by the sin of man. Nor can it see how afflictions 
are made use of by God to wean us from world- 
liness. And yet this is one of the fundamental 
facts of human experience. He who has lost 



By Mourning. 97 

nothing which this world has given him, how 
shall he learn to set his ' ' affections on things 
above, not on things on the earth ?" He who 
has with him in this world all whom he holds 
most dear, how shall he grasp the great realities 
of the world unseen and realize his relationship 
to the souls in Paradise? It is when, ''amidst 
the changes and chances of this mortal life/' we 
lose what we value most, that God reaches out 
and draws us most mightily to Himself. It is 
when He removes into the invisible world the 
lives which we have most loved, that we begin 
to learn of that world, to comprehend something 
of its life, and to prepare to join them in the 
unseen. Mourning is the means which God uses 
to draw many to himself who had been fast 
bound by the enjoyments and affections of this 
world. It is the bitter but wholesome medi- 
cine by which the sickness of many a soul is 
cured. 

Mourning has marvelous power to purify 
and ennoble and uplift the heart of man. It 
dispels at once many of the illusions of life, and 
shows him what his soul craves for most. It 
reduces the ordinary events and interests of life 
to their true proportions, and shows him how 
little after all this world has to give. It brings 
out all that is best in him, wakens all his finer 
sensibilities, and stirs his nobler self within him. 



98 Fourth Week — Thursday. 

It exalts and dignifies his strongest affections 
and relationships, lifts them up out of the 
narrow horizon of this present world, and sets 
them aloft in heavenly places where Christ sit- 
teth at the right hand of God. Henceforth, they 
are not things of time, but of eternity. They 
are no longer " of the earth earthy " but, refined 
and spiritualized, form a sweet and sacred side 
of our life which is hid with Christ in God. 

There are some souls who never mourn. 
They are too hard, too busy, too satisfied. But 
they are not the purest, noblest, loveliest souls ; 
their life is not the highest life. They are 
living upon the lowest levels of human experi- 
ence. It is they who have climbed painfully up 
to the hills from whence cometh their help, and 
left behind them the lowlands of common life, 
who breathe the pure air of heaven, and are near- 
est to God. For God has mourned, and it is 
Godlike to mourn. 

Reflect, O my soul. Has God lost anything? 
Has He been afflicted? Does He indeed mourn? 
Yes, we must say it reverently, God has had His 
losses too. Nothing of His material universe 
can be lost, not one atom of it can go to waste. 
But something more precious, namely, souls can 
be lost. Satan and his angels are lost. Man 
whom God has made in His Own Image is 
a fallen creature, redeemed as a race, it is true, 



By Mourning. 99 

but many of them are squandering their lives, 
losing their souls. God looks down upon a rebel- 
lious, suffering, sinning race, and mourns their 
fall. What was it caused the agony in the 
garden of Gethsemane? It was the awful, shock- 
ing, crushing consciousness of human sin, which 
bowed the Incarnate God down to the ground 
and broke His heart. He was a " man of 
sorrows, and acquainted with grief." And why? 
Was it because He had no place to lay His head? 
because He suffered bodily pain? because He was 
an outcast from human society? No, not so 
much for these as because He felt so keenly, so 
bitterly, so heavily, the burden of the world's 
sins. It was the awful sense of sin which made 
Him the Lamb of God. 

Every Christ-like man will go mourning all his 
days for sin. First and chiefly for his own sin, 
so dark, so deceitful, so hateful to himself, so 
unlovely in the sight of God. And then for the 
sins of mankind, so black, so vast, so desperate, 
so foul, so defiling to this fair world which God 
has made. Sin in the heart of man, that temple 
made without hands to be God's dwelling place ; 
sin in the mind of man, which was made to be 
like the mmd of Christ ; sin in the body of man, 
which God has made to bear about His Image 
in this world ; sin on this earth which God has 
made so bright and beautiful; sin among all 



IOO Fourth Week — Thursday. 

nations and peoples which dwell on the face of the 
earth ; sin in the Church, which is the Bride of 
Christ and where God's honor dwells ; must we 
not mourn for these ? ' ' Blessed are they that 
mourn " over the sin and shame and crime of a 
lost world, for in their mourning they are at one 
with God. 

All who truly mourn shall be comforted, not 
simply soothed and consoled, but "comforted." 
Their mourning shall strengthen them. It was 
so with the Chief Mourners of the world, they 
who mourned a crucified Lord. When the Holy 
Ghost, the Comforter, was come, they were in- 
stantly converted from a timid band of despised 
and dejected Galilean peasants into a glorious 
company of Apostles, a noble army of Martyrs, 
bold as lions to face a frowning world. They 
were comforted, strengthened in their mourning* 

So will it be with us, if we sorrow after a 
Godly sort. Our sorrow will be turned into 
joy, for we will have mourned with Christ and 
may rejoice with Him, when He comes again, 
in the Great Easter Day, 

(i To terminate the evil, 
To diadem the right." 

Then shall God " wipe away all tears from our 
eyes and there shall be no more death, neither sor- 
row, nor crying, neither shall there be any more 
pain, for the former things are passed away." l 

i Rev. xxi. 4. 



FOURTH WEEK IN LENT. 

Z$t (Jttasf erg ^er (jXbtm&itt. 



FRIDAY. 

BY MAKING PEACE. 



a Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the 
children of God."— 5/. Matt. v. 9. 

As we meditate upon one after another of 
the Beatitudes with which our Lord began His 
Sermon on the Mount, we see how far removed 
they are from the maxims of the world. Even 
after nineteen Christian centuries men are only 
beginning to attain to them. When first spoken 
they were in flat contradiction to the sentiments 
of the whole world. Up to that time it had 
been considered Godlike to make war. The 
favourite heathen deities were the gods of war. 
Even the chosen people of God expected a con- 
quering Messiah, a great Deliverer from their 
enemies. Since Christianity has somewhat 
changed the conceptions of deity and taught us 
to think of the Prince of Peace as the perfect 
incarnation of godliness, it is difficult for us to 



102 Fourth Week — Friday. 

realize how radical has been the revolution of 
human thought. And yet even now "the 
world " has not learned to say, Blessed are the 
peace-makers. It says, Blessed are the war- 
makers, still. Its loudest praises, its highest 
honors, its most munificent rewards are reserved 
for those who wage successful war. It feasts^ 
and flatters, and lauds to the skies the heroes 
of civil or international strife, and cares noth- 
ing for those who "follow after the things 
which make for peace." It has not learned its 
great lesson yet. It still delights in war. 

In direct opposition to the spirit of the world 
is the mind of Christ. Our Blessed Lord is the 
great Peace-maker between man and man, 
between man and God. He visited this world 
"to guide our feet into the way of peace." x 
He left it with these gracious words upon His 
lips, " Peace I leave with you, my peace I give 
unto you; not as the world giveth, give I unto 
you." 2 " He maketh wars to cease in all the 
world, He breaketh the bow, and snappeth the 
spear in sunder, and burneth the chariots in the 
fire." 3 Christianity, so far as its spirit has pre- 
vailed, has brought "peace on earth, goodwill 
among men." It teaches men to "seek peace 
and pursue it." * It has helped them to see 

i St. Luke i. 79. 3 Psalm xlvi. 9. 

2 St. Luke xiv. 27. 4 Psalm xxxiv. 13. 



By Making Peace. 1 03 

that peace-making is nobler, grander, more 
glorious than war-making. It has taught them 
to sacrifice pride, and prejudice, and privilege, 
and even rights, for the sake of peace. It urges 
them to bear_ opposition and injury and in- 
justice,' rather than resort to war. It exhorts 
them to "let patience have her perfect work." x 
Its God is the God of Peace, and its Lord is the 
Prince of Peace. 

If we are to be true Christians, if we are to 
"be called the children of God," we must be 
peace-makers. 

1. We must make peace between ourselves 
and God. This is thefirst step in peace-mak- 
ing. It is impossible for us to make peace 
between our fellow-men so long as our own 
hearts are the seat of war. We must be at 
peace within before we can make peace with- 
out. When the leaven of malice and wicked- 
ness has been purged out of our own hearts, 
when we have put away the sins which God 
hates, when we have made our peace with God, 
then we may begin to make peace among men. 
Solomon said of old, " He that ruleth his spirit 
is better than he that taketh a city." 2 And we 
may likewise say, He that hath subdued the 
passions which war within him and surrendered 
his whole heart to God is worthy of greater 

* St. James i. 4. 2 Prov. xvi. 32. 



104 Fourth Week — Friday. 

honours than the victor on earth's most famous 
battle-field. He has found " the way of peace." 

2. When we have made our peace with God, 
then comes the second step, which we shall find 
much easier than before. We shall long to be 
at peace with all our fellow-men. Since we are 
reconciled to God, it is far easier to be recon- 
ciled with them. The grievances which before 
seemed to us so great, the injuries which we 
resented so bitterly, the angry passions which 
flamed up so hotly within us, how different they 
look in the light of the Cross of Christ. In 
that clear effulgence all our human strifes sink 
away into insignificance, and the calm peace of 
God, which passeth all understanding, fills our 
hearts and minds. " The love of Christ con- 
straineth us " to love our fellow-men. 

3. Then at last, having made our peace with 
God and with all mankind, we can " follow 
after the things which make for peace." It is a 
difficult but blessed task, one which unites us 
very closely with Christ, the Great Peace- 
maker. To still the strife of tongues, to quench 
the fierce fires of passion which consume so 
many hearts, to lead men into the way of peace 
— this is Godlike work. How much of it have 
we done hitherto ? Have we used all our 
opportunities ? Is there anyone in the world 
to-day to whom our words or our influence have 



By Making Peace. 1 05 

gone out and reconciled him to his brother- 
man ? There ought to be many such. Each of 
us ought to be doing something in his own 
place and way to bring to pass the great Chris- 
tian ideal of ' i peace on earth and good will 
among men." 

" Blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall 
be called (shall be recognized as) the sons of 
God." Blessed beyond words shall they be 
who labour to restore the broken unity of the 
Church of Christ, to bring again the peace 
which has been lost through the sins and sep- 
arations of the members of Christ in former 
times, to hasten the fulfillment of our Lord's 
prayer that all Christians may be at one. Here 
is a great peace-making for which every true 
heart must work and pray. Let us make it our 
fervent prayer to-day that our Lord Jesus 
Christ, who said unto his apostles, Peace I 
leave with you, my peace I give unto you, may 
regard not our sins, but the faith of His Church, 
and grant her that peace and unity which are 
agreeable to His will. 



FOURTH WEEK IN LENT. 

ZQt (^taef erg &wx gtoewtfe* 



SATURDAY. 

THROUGH PERSECUTION. 



Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' 
sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye when 
men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all man- 
ner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice and be 
exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven. — St. Matt, 
v. 10-12. 

In this last beatitude our Blessed Lord 
reaches the extremity of unworldliness. The 
idea of rejoicing in unmerited sufferings, of 
glorying in persecution, is utterly alien to the 
tone and temper of those who love this present 
world. It seems to them but little short of 
insanity. The worldly Christians of to-day 
think lightly of the martyrs of the Ages of 
Faith, and never dream of themselves enduring 
anything for the cause of Christ. 

And yet the endurance of persecution for 
Christ's sake has always been one of the most 



Through Persecution. 107 

prominent features of Christianity. The Church 
has always wrung her successes out of defeats, 
has flourished under oppression, has thrived 
under adversity. The blood of the martyrs has 
been always the seed of the Church. It could 
not have been otherwise. " The disciple is not 
above his master, nor the servant above his 
lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be 
as his master, and the servant as his lord." x 
The followers of Christ must follow Him. 
They must travel the same thorny pathway 
which He trod. They must confront the Scribes 
and Pharisees of their day. They must have 
their Herod, their Pilate, their Calvary. " All 
that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer 
persecution.'' 2 We must make up our minds 
to that. The worldly world hates genuine 
goodness; is shamed, reproached, goaded to 
fury in its presence. True goodness will never 
be left long unmolested. Whenever and wher- 
ever the Church is true to her Lord she will 
have persecutions to bear. 

We of to-day need to remember this. We 
need to ask, What is our Church suffering for 
Christ ? Where are her confessors for the Faith, 
her martyrs, her sufferers for Christ ? Has she 
sunk down into the low and mistaken belief 
that the ages of persecution are past, that she 

1 St. Matt. x. 24, 25. 2 II Tim. iii. 12. 



108 Fourth Week — Saturday. 

has no blood to shed for Christ ? Let her look 
across the seas to that ancient branch of Christ's 
Church, feeble in the eyes of men, but glorious 
in the sight of God, the Church in Armenia, 
which is giving her martyrs by hundreds, and 
her patient sufferers by thousands, to the sacred 
cause of Christ. Who shall dare to say that, 
despised, forsaken, almost destroyed, she is not 
the most blessed part of Christendom ? Shall 
not her splendid example of faithful endurance 
waken the Church throughout the world to do 
and dare for Christ ? Shall not the story of her 
martyrdoms send us back to the heroic days of 
faith to learn what Christians have done and 
borne for Christ ? We do not know enough of 
the holy men of old. We do not read enough 
of the lives of the saints. We lose the joy and 
stimulus which we ought to draw from our 
Catholic heritage of history. The Church of 
to-day needs to unite herself in sympathy, in 
faith, in suffering with the persecuted Church 
of the past. 

As individual Christians also we need to ask 
ourselves, Is my Christianity genuine enough 
to subject me to persecution for righteousness' 
sake ? Every true Christian will have some- 
thing to endure from the enemies of the Cross 
of Christ. Perhaps not stripes, or imprison- 
ment, or martyrdom, but petty persecution, 



Through Persecution . 1 09 

constant, galling, painful. The world has cruel 
weapons with which to punish those who will 
not submit to its demands, and it shows no 
mercy in the use of them. If a Christian will 
sacrifice his principles and conform to the world, 
he may go unhurt. But if he will be true to 
his Master and himself, he shall soon learn how 
sharp and merciless they are. Until then he has 
not made full proof of his ministry. Until then 
he has not been prepared by the stern discipline 
of adversity to enter into the joy of his Lord. 
" Beloved, think it not strange concerning the 
fiery trial which is to try you, as though some 
strange thing happened unto you; but rejoice, 
inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's suffer- 
ings, that when His glory shall be revealed, ye 
may be glad also with exceeding joy." x 

This beatitude has one limitation of which 
we must not lose sight. It is only those who 
are persecuted "for righteousness' sake," only 
those against whom evil is said " falsely, for 
Christ's sake," who can appropriate its promise 
to themselves. Much of that which we have to 
bear, great part of the opposition which we 
meet, is simply the result of our own weakness 
and wrong-doing. Some of the evil which is 
said against us is only too true. We ought to 
endure all this uncomplainingly, but that is a 
1 I St. Peter iv. 12, 13. 



HO Fourth Week — Saturday. 

very different thing from suffering for Christ's 
sake. St. Peter spoke out of a deep and long 
experience of persecution for Christ's sake when 
he wrote these words. " Let none of you suffer 
as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, 
or as a busybody in other men's matters. Yet 
if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be 
ashamed, but let him glorify God on this 
behalf." * 

As the fruit of this meditation let us form 
within ourselves three resolves. 

i. That we will learn more of the lives of 
God's saints. It is a wise plan to read devo- 
tionally day by day each year the biography 
of some martyr or confessor, and try to catch 
from the story of their lives something of the 
spirit which animated them. 

2. That we will expect persecution as a 
natural and needful element in our Christian 
experience. Thus we shall not be taken off our 
guard nor thrown into too great anxiety when 
it bursts upon us. We shall simply accept it 
as a part and proof of our discipleship, and go 
bravely and gladly on our way. 

3. That we will pray for those who despite- 
fully use us and persecute us. Prayer is the 
trusty weapon with which persecution may be 
met and mastered. Taking St. Stephen, the 

1 I St. Peter iv. 15, 16. 



Through Persecution. 1 1 1 

first martyr of the Christian Church, as our 
example, let us learn to love and bless our per- 
secutors. While they work their will upon us, 
let us look up steadfastly into Heaven and 
beseech our Lord to "lay not this sin to their 
charge.' ' 



FIFTH WEEK IN LENT. 
%$t QJtasferg &t>er J§tn, 



MONDAY. 

THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY. 



"The mystery of iniquity." — II. Thess. ii. 7. 

Human life is full of mysteries, of things 
whose existence we cannot doubt, but which we 
can never wholly understand, until in the great 
hereafter we shall know even as we are known. 
The Christian Faith has its great mysteries, its 
tremendous truths, which transcend the boun- 
daries of human thought, and which, so long as 
we are in this world, can never be fully ex- 
plained to us. But of all mysteries one of the 
deepest, darkest, most perplexing is that of 
which St. Paul speaks, the Mystery of Iniquity. 
It is one which challenges the consideration of 
every mind, and of which we ought especially 
to think in Lent. Let us take it as the subject 
of our meditations this week. 



The Mystery of Iniquity. 1 1 3 

There is nothing in the world more evident 
than the fact of sin. No thinking being can 
deny its existence. It is everywhere, in every 
land, in every life. It penetrates every depart- 
ment of life, colors most of our waking and 
sleeping thoughts, and makes its mark on every 
soul. We cannot take any true views of life, 
we cannot form any wise plans, we cannot have 
any genuine religion, which leave out of sight 
the great fact of human sin. There is sin in 
the world, sin in the Church, sin in the heart of 
every man. There is none without sin, no, not 
one. " All have sinned and come short of the 
glory of God." z Until we have learned this, 
we have missed one of the plainest and most 
profitable lessons of human experience. 

But we have no sooner grasped the great fact 
of sin than the Mystery of Iniquity begins to 
press upon us. How did sin come into the 
world ? Where did it come from ? How did it 
gain a foothold here ? How could our good 
God permit it to plant itself and make havoc in 
His world ? These questions have always agi- 
tated the minds of men, and they always will, 
until they shall finally be solved along with 
other problems of human life and destiny at the 
Last Great Day. Holy Scripture, while it 
throws light upon them, does not make them 

1 Romans iii. 10, 12, 23. 



1 1 4 Fifth Week— Monday. 

plain. They remain a mystery. The more we 
have to do with sin, the more closely we study 
it, the more fiercely we contend against it, the 
deeper becomes our sense of its subtlety, its 
terror, its mystery. It looms above the world, 
and casts its awful shadow over human life, and 
leagues its silent superhuman forces against our 
souls, and sometimes scares us into helpless- 
ness and paralyzes us with vague and nameless 
fears. It brooded over Calvary, and gathered 
round the Cross, and shut out the sight of the 
Sinless Sufferer from human eyes, and smote 
the bystanders with a strange sense of awe. 
It tortured the soul of our Saviour on the Cross, 
and wrung from Him that bitter cry, "My 
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " 
It dogs the steps of every follower of Christ, 
and presses home upon him a multitude of deep 
questions to test his courage and to try his 
faith. 

There is the old question of the origin of sin. 
How did it begin ? How did it get into the 
world ? Why did God suffer it to gain its hold 
upon men ? To this question we can give no 
complete reply. Basing our belief upon the 
Word of God, we may say that the possibility 
of evil is inherent in the creation of the world. 
Evil is not a positive thing in itself, but is the 
perversion and failure of something which was 



The Mystery of Iniquity. 115 

good. When, therefore, God created man in 
His own Image and pronounced him good, the 
possibility of sin began. In the exercise of the 
free will which man must have in order that he 
might do good, it was open to him to choose 
the evil and refuse the good. If man was to be 
an intelligent and responsible being, he must 
have that power of choice in which resides the 
opportunity of sin. But after this is said the 
origin of evil remains a deep mystery still. 

Nor is it much easier to explain the perman- 
ence and power of evil in the world. "The 
Lord looked down from heaven upon the chil- 
dren of men to see if there were any that would 
understand and seek after God. But they are 
all gone out of the way; they are altogether 
become abominable; there is none that doeth 
good, no, not one. Their throat is an open 
sepulchre; with their tongues have they 
deceived ; the poison of asps is under their lips. 
Their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; 
their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction 
and unhappiness is in their ways ; and the way 
of peace have they not known ; there is no fear 
of God before their eyes." x 

Speaking broadly, this is a true view of 
human life as it looks to-day in the sight of 
God. How can a good and holy God permit 

1 Psalm xiv. 3-7. 



Il6 Fifth Week— Monday. 

His world to continue in such a state ? Why 
does He not come at once to right all wrongs 
and root out evil from the world ? This is the 
anxious inquiry of all true and loyal hearts, 
and it finds no full and adequate reply. We 
grieve over the growth of sin and the awful 
havoc which it makes, and long for the XxV 
umphant coming of our King. We utter with 
increasing anxiety our oft-renewed complaint, 
" Why tarry the wheels of His chariot ? Why 
is His chariot so long in coming ?" J And 
there comes no voice of God or man to tell us 
all that we would know. Not until ' ' the day 
break and the shadows flee away," and we stand 
in the dawn of the eternal Easter Day, shall the 
Mystery of Iniquity be made plain, and we 
shall "see of the travail of our souls and be 
satisfied. ,, 

To-day let us take a few thoughts to comfort 
us in our ignorance. 

i. Our belief in the goodness of God need 
not be shattered by the existence of sin in His 
world. We have ample proof of His holiness 
and His good-will towards mankind. When 
human sin and the world's wickedness seem to 
impeach the moral government of God, we 
must remember how limited our powers of 
judgment are, how little we know after all of 

i Judges v. 28. 



The Mystery of Iniquity. 1 1 7 

the complicated movements of life in this world 
and the next. Then we shall not be in haste 
to judge God. 

2. Human sin has called forth the most won- 
derful manifestations of God's love. The 
exhibition of His patience and tenderness in 
dealing with sinners, and the sacrifice of His 
well-beloved Son for the sins of the whole 
world have taught us, as perhaps nothing else 
could, the depth of divine love, and have helped 
us to know God. 

3. God overrules the evil in the world 
towards the accomplishment of His own pur- 
poses. However much the powers of evil may- 
seem to be enlarged, however insolently they 
may seem to triumph over us, God ruleth over 
all, and in His own good time they all shall be 
subdued and even " the fierceness of man shall 
turn to His praise." 

Let us comfort ourselves with these thoughts 
while we ponder over the fathomless Mystery 
of Iniquity. 



FIFTH WEEK IN LENT. 
£0e (gtasferg &t)er JJtn* 



TUESDAY. 

THE PERVASIVENESS OF SIN. 



"If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and 
the truth is not in us. — i St. John i. 8, 

Yesterday we thought of sin as a falling 
short of the end for which God created us, a 
failure to fulfil all righteousness. To-day let 
us think of it as a positive force in the world. 
Since it has found an entrance into the world 
and planted itself in the midst of human life, 
it has become an active principal of unrighte- 
ousness pervading everything. It is energetic, 
aggressive, intrusive. It cannot rest content 
with any conquest which it has made, but is 
ever pressing on to gain new ground. It is 
infectious and spreads like a malignant disease 
with startling rapidity. It is but little abashed 
by defeat, and feels but slight restraint from 
fear or shame. It boldly enters everywhere. 



The Pervasiveness of Sin. 119 

It invaded Paradise and tempted the parents of 
our race. It corrupted the old world and drew 
it away from God. It beset the holiest men of 
old. It contaminated the whole national and 
religious life of the chosen people of God. It 
thrust itself into that sacred solitude where our 
blessed Lord at the threshold of his earthly 
ministry communed with God. It invaded the 
sacred circle of His apostles, and dragged down 
one of them to a despairing death. It entered 
the palace of the High Priest, and persuaded 
the rulers of the Jewish Church to condemn to 
death the Messiah whom God had sent. It 
persecuted the Church of Christ until the earth 
was drenched with blood. We are assured that 
before the end of the world it shall oppose and 
exalt itself above all that is called God, or that 
is worshiped; so that it as God sitteth in the 
temple of God, showing itself that it is God. ■ 
To such awful lengths has sin gone ; in such 
frightful blasphemy will it culminate. When 
we look out over human life, we are forced to 
make the sad confession, the trail of the serpent 
is over it all. We might have thought that 
there would be some avenues of life from which 
sin would be shut out, some characters beyond 
its reach, some holy places where it would not 
dare to show itself. But no, there is no spot 

1 II. Thess. ii. 4. 



120 Fifth Week — Tuesday. 

so sacred that it will not venture there, no heart 
so pure that sin will not knock at its door, no 
life so holy as to be beyond the reach of sin. 
There has been but one sinless human Life, and 
that was beyond all other lives beset and buf- 
feted by the powers of sin. 

What is true of sin in the world, is still more 
strikingly true of it in its assaults upon each 
individual soul. 

There is no soul beyond the reach of sin. 
However close we may have come to Christ, 
however complete our consecration to Him may 
be, no matter what heights of sanctity we may 
have gained, no matter how truly we may have 
repented of our sins past, we must never flatter 
ourselves that we are safe. Holy Scripture, 
with its frank and fearless record of the lives 
of David, and Solomon, and Peter, and Judas, 
warns us that there is no life which sin may 
not invade and endanger and hurl down to the 
ground. To think that, however pervasive the 
powers of sin may be, we are out of their reach, 
is to make a soul-destroying mistake. "If we 
say that we have no sin (that we are beyond 
the reach of sin), we deceive ourselves and the 
truth is not in us." 

There is no time nor place in which we will 
not be beset by sin. It confronted our Blessed 
Lord as He came up out of waters of baptism, 



The Pervasiveness of Sin. 1 2 I 

dogged His footsteps all through His ministry, 
followed Him into the temple courts, inter- 
rupted His teachings, explained away His 
miracles, intruded upon His hours of solitude, 
embittered His agony in the garden and on the 
Cross. Surely then it will not spare us. In 
our baptismal purity, when apostolic hands 
have just been laid upon our brow, in the first 
fervor of some reconsecration of ourselves to 
Christ in the hour of prayer, in the house of 
God, beside the altar rail, in every hallowed 
place and every holy hour, satan will seek us 
out and redouble his assaults upon our soul. 
There is no safety for us but in sleepless vigi- 
lance and undying distrust of self. 

If we would gain the mastery over sin, there 
is another fact of which we must remind our- 
selves. There is no sin which, once expelled 
from our heart, will not seek to return. When 
in Lent, or at some other time, we have gathered 
up all the energies of our soul and hurled them 
against some sin which is undermining our 
spiritual health, and have fought it bravely to 
the death, we must not think that we shall see 
its face no more. We may be quite sure that 
sooner or later it will return, perhaps in some 
new and more seductive form, and seek to 
regain its hold upon our heart. There are 
besetting sins which besiege, and persecute, and 



122 Fifth Week— Tuesday. 

pursue human souls relentlessly. We battle 
against them, and sometimes think that we 
have overcome them and put them once for all 
under our feet. But in an hour when we think 
not they will return, perhaps in some more 
subtle form, but still the same old familiar sins. 
So long as life lasts we shall never be free from 
their insidious attacks. 

These thoughts of the energy and persistent 
intrusiveness of sin are enough to alarm and 
bewilder us. They ought to put us on our 
guard and make us very watchful against the 
constantly renewed assaults of sin. But they 
ought not to drive us into despondency. Christ 
conquered sin upon the Cross. Ever since He 
won that splendid victory, its power among 
men has been growing less. The forces that 
make for righteousness are increasing and 
triumphing everywhere. They that are for us 
are more than they that are against us. "If 
God be for us, who can be against us ? " x The 
ultimate triumph of the powers of good is 
assured. Slowly but surely the glorious victory 
of right over wrong is being won. The waves 
of sin " are mighty and rage horribly, but yet 
the Lord who dwelleth on high is mightier." 2 
If we put our trust in Him, we need not fear 
the powers of sin, however active and subtle 

i Romans viii. 31. 2 Psalm xciii. 5. 



The Pervasiveness of Sin. 123 

they may be. Let us try then to-day, to deepen 
in ourselves these two thoughts : 

1. The sleepless energy and shameless effron- 
tery of sin. 

2. And the comforting assurance of its final 
overthrow in every heart where Christ is King. 



FIFTH WEEK IN LENT. 
£0e (Hftasf erg <&t>et J^tn, 



WEDNESDAY. 

THE DECEITFULNESS OF SIN. 



" The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately 
wicked : who can know it? " — -Jeremiah xvii, g. 

There is in the heart of man a tendency to 
do wrong, a moral weakness inherited from the 
parent of our race, which makes it easy for us 
to sin. But there is also in the human heart a 
tendency to do right, implanted by God when 
He made man in His own Image, and trans- 
mitted to every soul born into this world. 
There are the elements of good and evil in 
every life. But blessed be God, the forces 
which make for righteousness are so well 
intrenched in the human heart and are so for- 
midable that the powers of evil are driven to 
deceit and strategy when they attempt to dis- 
lodge them. Sin seldom dares to fight in open 
field. It lies in ambush, masks and hides itself, 



The Deceit fulness of Sin. 125 

puts on friendly guise, and talks of peace when 
there is war in its heart. It will not fight fair. 
It is full of subtlety, deceit, and artifice. Its 
victims are won by guile and hypocrisy. 

How seldom does a man deliberately surrender 
himself to sin ? He does not at first see it in 
its naked ugliness. It comes to him cunningly 
disguised, decently clad, with all its repulsive 
features hidden out of sight. It excuses, apol- 
ogizes for, justifies itself. It masquerades in 
the garb of virtue. It ingratiates itself craftily 
into its victim's confidence, and lulls to sleep 
his fears. The miser, the spendthrift, the liar, 
the thief, the traitor, the murderer, all have 
their excuses, their sophistries, their justifica- 
tions of self. If sin is to find an entrance into 
the heart of man, it must disguise itself and 
enter under an assumed name. Nor does it 
throw off the disguise as soon as it finds itself 
within. It artfully conceals its real purposes, 
until it has eaten out the heart of that wretched 
man and done its fatal work. Then at last 
there comes an awful day when its borrowed 
robes are cast aside, and it rises up in all its 
naked hideousness to rule the heart which it has 
won. Then its miserable victim sees how he 
has been beguiled, and all the world is shocked 
as it sees him plunge into the bottomless pit of 
iniquity. 



126 Fifth Week — Wednesday. 

Take a living example of this. Take Judas 
Iscariot. His life seems full of promise at the 
start. He is a man of good impulses, of irre- 
proachable conduct, of high business and execu- 
tive ability. He is brought into contact with 
Jesus Christ, his heart goes out to Him, he 
loves Him. Jesus loves him, He sets His 
heart upon him, calls him to be the trusted 
companion of His daily life, one of the chief 
foundation-stones of His Kingdom among men. 
His fellow apostles recognize his excellent 
qualities. They make him their treasurer and 
entrust to him all that they have in this world. 
The whole management of their affairs is left to 
him. 

But there is one root of evil in his heart, a 
love of money for its own sake. He cannot 
bear to see it go to waste. He thinks his Mas- 
ter is not careful enough for the things of this 
world. He resolves to pursue a worldly-wise 
and prudent policy. He will hoard their scanty 
store of wealth more closely than his Lord. 
He will not let it go to every wandering worth- 
less beggar who may cross their path. None of 
it must be spent except for the most urgent 
need. He will increase it at every chance. 
And so the purse-strings" draw tighter day by 
day, his mind becomes more and more absorbed 
in earthly things, the deceitfulness of riches 



The Deceitfulness of Sin. 127 

gnaws secretly within his heart. At last one 
day a holy woman in an ecstasy of loving 
gratitude pours out from an alabaster box a 
pound of ointment of spikenard, very precious, 
upon the body of her Lord. The heart of 
Judas is torn by a paroxysm of envious rage. 
' ' To what purpose is this waste ? Why was not 
this ointment sold for 300 pence and given to 
the poor ? " * This he said, not because he cared 
for the poor, but because he was a thief, and 
had the bag, and bore what was put therein. 

What a revelation have we here ! Judas, the 
man of honour, the bearer of responsibility, the 
chosen companion of Christ, the scrupulous 
administrator of his Master's affairs, has fallen 
a prey to the sin of avarice, has become a thief, 
has rebuked his Lord. It will not be long 
until, goaded on by his secret sin, he will sell 
the King of Glory into the hands of His enemies 
and sink into a dishonoured grave. Who that 
knows the sad story of his life and death can 
ever doubt the deceitfulness of sin ? 

Let us try to bring this truth home to our- 
selves to-day. We see the deceitfulness of sin 
in other lives. We shudder as we watch it 
tightening its serpent coils round other souls. 
But we are strangely blind to its cunning 
assaults upon ourselves. It creeps so softly 

1 St. John xii. 5, 9. 



128 Fifth Week — Wednesday. 

into our hearts, makes such good excuses for its 
entrance there, seems so powerless for harm, 
simulates the likeness of virtue so cleverly, that 
we are thrown entirely off our guard. We are 
too blind to see that we are entertaining evil 
angels unawares. Often we do not discover 
our mistake until it is too late. It was thus 
that the sin of avarice gained the mastery over 
Judas' heart. It disguised itself under the 
mask of faithfulness to the trust imposed upon 
him by his fellow apostles and his Lord, pre- 
tended to be zealous for their worldly interests, 
championed the cause of the poor, and feigned 
righteous indignation in their behalf. So 
secretly did it do its work that none of the 
apostles knew what ruin it had wrought. 
Judas himself, when the sad announcement was 
made that one of them should betray their 
Lord, inquired like the rest, " Lord, is it I?" 
It was not until his sin had gone to the most 
awful length that he saw how completely he 
had become its slave. Such is the deceitfulness 
of sin. 

Let us then look to ourselves. When the 
awful truth of the duplicity of sin is forced 
home to our hearts, when we see others falling 
victims to its wiles, when we hear our Saviour's 
warning cry — " Behold, he is at hand that doth 
betray Me," when inspired voices tell us that by 



The Deceit fulness of Sin. 1 29 

their sins men crucify to themselves the Son of 
God afresh and put Him to an open shame, let 
us ask very anxiously, very earnestly, Lord, is 
it I ? Let us look deep into our hearts and 
search out our sins before it be too late. 



FIFTH WEEK IN LENT. 
£0e (Jttasferg &wt J^in* 



THURSDAY. 

THE LAWLESSNESS OF SIN. 



" Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth the law, for sin is 
the transgression of the law." — I. St. John Hi. 4. 

To-day let us go a little deeper into the Mys- 
tery of Iniquity and ask ourselves the searching 
question, What is sin ? Perhaps St. Augustine 
will give us the best reply. He defines it as 
" Something said, or done, or desired, in oppo- 
sition to the Eternal Law of God." Sin, there- 
fore, is disobedience, transgression, lawlessness. 
The sinner is one who has broken loose from 
all restraint, taken things into his own hands, 
and resolved to be a law unto himself. He 
declines to acknowledge any authority higher 
than that of his own will. He makes his own 
judgment supreme, and insists upon going his 
own way unhindered by any requirements 
human or divine. Let us see what this means 
and involves. 



The Lawlessness of Sin. 1 3 J 

We find ourselves born into a material and 
spiritual universe, and made partakers of its 
life and destiny. We learn by many infallible 
proofs that this universe of which we are a part 
was made and is sustained and governed by a 
Supreme Divine Being, whom we call God. It 
owes its existence entirely to Him, and He has 
absolute power over it. It is in His hands. 
He governs it upon certain fixed principles, 
which we call the laws of nature. These laws 
are not arbitrary or capricious rules laid down 
by Him to please Himself. They are based 
upon the eternal realities of things. They 
arise out of the necessities of the case. They 
could not be other than they are. They spring 
naturally and inevitably out of the constitution 
of the universe. They are simply the perfect 
methods by which a Supreme Being, infinitely 
powerful and wise and good, must maintain the 
universe which He has made. They are God's 
way of securing the welfare and safety of the 
human race. 

The laws of God, then, are only the ben- 
eficent provisions which our Creator has made 
for our security. So long as they are observed 
we can dwell in safety, and can hope for happi- 
ness. " All things work together for good to 
them that love God." z God destined the 

1 Romans viii. 28, 



*3 2 Fifth Week — Thursday. 

human race for an eternal life of happiness, 
and placed mankind in an environment where 
everything was divinely planned with a view 
to his best interests. It is therefore expe- 
dient that man should accept the conditions of 
life under which he finds himself placed, and 
make the best of them. To reject them or 
ignore them, to refuse to submit to them, to 
undertake to readjust them to suit himself, or 
to live in open revolt against them, is to make 
a most awful mistake. It is to throw away the 
hope of happiness, to cast aside all that his 
good God has given him, to put himself out of 
harmony with his environment, to thrust him- 
self into antagonism with all the mighty forces 
which are at work in the universe. 

But it is much more than this. It is to 
wound and insult and defy Almighty God. 
What can be more shameful than the sight of 
man lifting himself up against his Maker, trust- 
ing in his own wisdom, presuming to find fault 
with the provisions which God has made for 
his best good, repudiating the principles of 
God's moral government of the world, and liv- 
ing a life of open disobedience to his Maker's 
will ? If we could stand apart and witness for 
the first time the spectacle of man rebelling 
against God, which of us would not shudder at 
the sight ? Which of us would fail to realize 



The Lawlessness of Sin. 133 

the frightful folly and desperate wickedness of 
that misguided man ? It is only because the 
sight is so familiar that we are blinded to its 
terrible significance. 

Sin, then, in its essence, consists in a viola- 
tion of the divine order of human life. It is 
rebellion, revolt, resistance against the Sov- 
ereign Ruler of the universe. It is the creature 
against the Creator, the child against the 
Father, man against God. It violates, out- 
rages, and destroys all the sweet and strong 
relationships which bind men to God. It intro- 
duces disorder, distrust, and anarchy into God's 
world. It means, if it should go on unchecked, 
the utter destruction of this fair world, and the 
defeat of God's good purposes in the creation of 
mankind. Every sin, even that which we call 
the least, is great and terrible in reality, because 
it involves a violation of God's righteous law. 
Every sin falls like a blow upon the tender, 
loving heart of God, and cuts asunder one more 
of the cords which bind us to Him. 

But there is another side of this subject of 
which we need to think, and it ought to come 
very close home to us. Human sin involves 
outrage to God and also hurt to man. Human 
happiness and the soul's health can only be 
found in obedience to God. St. Augustine was 
right when he exclaimed, "Thou, O God, hast 



*34 Fifth Week — Thursday. 

made us for Thyself, and our heart is restless 
and unquiet until it find rest in Thee." There 
is no rest, no peace for the soul apart from 
God. To forsake Him is to make for oneself a 
hell, for the chief suffering of hell consists in 
the sense of separation from God. 

Now sin is the great separator; it separates 
man from man, and man from God. Sin robs 
God of his creatures, and robs man of his happi- 
ness. It makes a great gulf between men, and 
a still wider one between them and their God. 
Its essential principle is selfishnesss, that hateful 
passion which not only disregards the rights of 
God but grasps at what belongs to our fellow- 
men, snatches greedily at the prizes of this 
world and loses the good things of God. When 
we look out over the world and see the lawless- 
ness of sin, we do not need to ask whence come 
the miseries of mankind. We only wonder 
that the human race has not been utterly de- 
stroyed from off the face of the earth by its 
sins. 

Let us think to-day of humanity as a prodigal 
race which has chafed under the benevolent 
restraints of home, forsaken the shelter of its 
Father's House, demanded its portion of God's 
goods, and wilfully gone its own way. It has 
wandered into a far country, wasted its sub- 
stance with riotous living, and is now reduced 



The Lawlessness of Sin. 135 

to wretched want and misery. Its proud and 
wayward heart yet unsubdued, it feeds upon 
the swinish husks of a gross carnal life, and 
sinks daily into deeper abysses of wickedness. 
Why does it not arise and go to its Father, and 
say unto Him, " Father, I have sinned against 
heaven and before Thee, and am no more 
worthy to be called Thy son ; make me as one 
of Thy hired servants ?" If there is joy in 
Heaven over one sinner that repenteth, how 
great would be the rejoicing over the return of 
the whole human race ! 

But let us bring this question nearer home 
and ask it of ourselves. We who are meditat- 
ing to-day upon the lawlessness of sin, we whose 
sins have separated us from God, we weary 
wanderers in the ways of this world, why do 
we not go back at once to our Father's House, 
and cast ourselves humbly at His feet ? How 
quick, and glad, and warm would be our wel- 
come home ! 



FIFTH WEEK IN LENT. 



FRIDAY. 

THE MALIGNITY OF SIN. 



" And the Lord God said unto the serpent, because thou hast 
done this, thou art accursed above all cattle, and above every 
beast of the field. And I will put enmity between thee and the 
woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise thy 
head and thou shalt bruise his heel." — Genesis Hi. 14, /jr. 

We were thinking yesterday of the good 
providence of God, and of the way in which it 
is lawlessly disdained by men and thwarted by 
their sins. But we must go further to-day, 
We must think of the malignity of sin. It not 
only declines to go God's way, but it violently 
antagonizes all who do so. 

Think of the malignity of sin against all that 
is good. Look out over the world's life and 
see how sin is battling against the powers of 
good everywhere. How busy it is, how tireless, 
how sleepless, how vehement, how persistent 
in its opposition to all that is good. Waken a 



The Malignity of Sin, 



o/ 



good impulse in some human heart, and you 
rouse all the evil passions of that heart to 
resistance. Win a soul to Christ, and you bring 
upon it temptations to sin, fiercer and fouler 
than it ever knew before. Set some good in- 
fluence at work in the world, and you will 
excite all the violence of evil against it. Build 
a Church, and you will goad to fury all the 
"rulers of the darkness of this world." Do 
any good deed, interest yourself in the victims 
of gross forms of sin, inaugurate any plan for 
the elevation of the human race, make a definite 
effort to build up your own spiritual life, and 
you will soon find out the malignity of sin. 
You will learn how determined, how violent, 
how savage is its opposition to all that is good. 
Think of the malignity of sin against the 
human race. It has always been jealous of 
human happiness. When God had made man 
in his own image, and placed him in Paradise, 
and bade him enjoy its perpetual peace and 
happiness, the malignity of sin was exhibited. 
With serpentine subtlety it seduced him from 
his original righteousness, made a great gulf 
between him and God, ruined the beautiful 
creation which God had made, and brought 
endless misery upon the human race. From 
that day to this it has been busy in God's world, 
marring, wrecking, ruining human happiness; 



138 Fifth Week — Friday. 

going to and fro in the earth, troubling the 
children of men, and drawing them away from 
God. There is nothing upon which it does not 
cast a jealous eye, and lay a destroying hand. 
It defaces and defiles this fair earth in which 
we live, converts our cities into sinks of corrup- 
tion and disease, mars the finest creations of 
the human mind and hand, corrupts all litera- 
ture and art, debauches the bodies of men and 
wastes them away with riotous excess, disturbs 
the peace of happy homes, embitters the sweet- 
ness of human friendship, sets the nations of 
the earth at war, invades the Church of God 
and sets up " spiritual wickedness in high 
places/' darkens all human history, and poisons 
all human life. The old prophecy is being 
fulfilled in our midst day by day. The human 
race, the seed of the woman, has bruised the 
serpent's head, and the old serpent of sin is 
bruising his heel. There is undying enmity 
between the two. 

But that prophecy has had a more complete 
and awful fulfillment than that which it finds in 
the human race. When the Son of God "for 
us men and for our salvation came down from 
Heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost 
of the Virgin Mary, and was made man," He 
drew upon himself the whole fury of the ser- 
pent's wrath. He by his Cross and Passion 



The Malign ity of Sin . 139 

bruised the serpent's head, but the serpent 
bruised His heel. Sin could not hurt His head, 
His divinity; but it struck its cruel fangs deep 
into His heel, His sacred humanity. 

Consider the malignity of sin against the 
Saviour of the world. It crowded Him out of 
the inn at Bethlehem, sought the life of the 
Young Child to destroy Him, drove Him down 
into Egypt and back to humble Nazareth, cut 
off the head of His chosen messenger, pursued 
Him into the wilderness, murmured and plotted 
against Him all through His ministry, denied 
His teachings and miracles, filled His followers 
with nameless fears and set them at variance 
among themselves, betrayed Him to His ene- 
mies, falsely condemned Him, scourged Him, 
spit in His face, crowned Him with thorns, 
crucified Him, mocked Him as he hung upon 
the Cross, set a watch over His grave, denied 
His resurrection, did its best to destroy His 
followers off the face of the earth, has never 
ceased to persecute His Church, wages ceaseless 
warfare even in its defeat. Such has been the 
malignity of sin against the Head of the human 
race. It recognised His holiness, felt instinc- 
tively His power, and knew Him as its conqueror. 
This knowledge goaded it to ungovernable fury, 
and drove it on to do its worst upon Him. 

Sin has no mercy upon either friend or foe. 



140 Fifth Week — Friday, 

Towards those who resist it, it is unyielding, 
implacable, remorseless. Towards those who 
yield to it, it is more cruel still. How cunningly 
it lures them on! How skilfully it smooths 
their path and calms their fears! How insati- 
able it is in its demands! How it dupes its 
wretched votaries, until there comes the evil 
day when it is established in the heart, and its 
disguise is thrown off, and "at last it biteth 
like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder." Go 
to the saloon, go to the brothel, go to the jail, 
and see how sin treats its victims, how it rewards 
them for their obedience, how it blasts, and 
blackens, and embitters their lives, and then 
you will begin to realize something of its terrible 
malignity. Take up the Gospels and read the 
story of the demoniacs of Gadara, and you will 
witness the legitimate results of sin in the heart 
of man. 

You have seen to-day something of the awful 
malignity of sin, of all sin, of your sin. The 
sin which lurks in your heart is in its essence, 
and will be in its results, the same as that which 
crucified your Lord. The sin which knocks so 
gently at your door, which is creeping so 
softly into your life, which seems so harmless 
now, will prove just as deceptive, exacting, and 
cruel towards you as it has always been to your 
fellowmen. It will never rest until it has 



The Malignity of Sin. 141 

corrupted, conquered, enslaved you. And 
when you have become its slave it will make 
hell in your heart. 

Take home to yourself, then, this warning 
to-day. Remember the malignity of sin. Rec- 
ognise its foulness, under however fair an exte- 
rior. Resist its encroachments with all your 
might. Master it before it masters you. 



FIFTH WEEK IN LENT. 
£0e (tttasfere faux JSin. 



SATURDAY. 

THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS. 



" Without controversy great is the Mystery of Godliness." — 
/. St. Timothy Hi, 16. 

We have been busy thus far this week trying 
to realize something of the Mystery of Iniquity. 
We have seen the activity, the deceitfulness, 
the lawlessness, the malignity of sin. We have 
seen " the rulers of the darkness of this world " 
working craftily together under the leadership 
of satan to win men away from God, stubbornly 
combating all the good that is in the world, 
furiously raging against the Incarnate Son of 
God and all who follow Him. We have felt 
forced to cry out, Great is the power, great is 
the Mystery of Iniquity. 

But there is a still greater mystery, the Mys- 
tery of Godliness. When we are seized with 
fear and trembling at the thought of the evil 



The Mystery of Godliness, 1 43 

that is in the world, we may comfort ourselves 
with the assurance that sin is a vanquished 
enemy. However aggressive and insolent it 
may be, its power is broken; it can have no 
power over us at all except what we permit it 
to have. Christ wrestled with sin on the Cross, 
triumphed over it, inflicted upon it a complete 
and crushing defeat, and put it forever under- 
neath His feet. His struggle and his victory 
are alike a mystery. We cannot enter into the 
deeper experiences of His passion. We can 
only vaguely comprehend the methods of His 
spiritual warfare. It is one of the great Chris- 
tian mysteries whose bottomless depths cannot 
be fathomed by the mind of man. But it is an 
accomplished fact, the central fact of human 
history, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Dark- 
ness may hide the battle from our sight, as it 
hid the Suffering Body from the eyes of those 
who gathered round the Cross, but the light 
that broke again on Calvary revealed the glori- 
ous eternal truth that the Lamb of God had 
taken away the sins of the world. That blessed 
light shall never cease to shine, however earth- 
born clouds may darken it. That truth shall 
never fail. 

Sin is conquered, man is free, 
Christ has won the victory. 

Great is the Mystery of Godliness in the vie- 



144 Fifth Week — Saturday. 

tory of the Cross, and hardly less great is it in 
the experience of each human heart. The bat- 
tle of the Cross has to be fought over again in 
its lesser and humbler way in every life. It is 
a mysterious conflict, more real, more moment- 
ous, more supernatural than we are wont to 
realize. It is a spiritual combat in which we 
wrestle not so much against flesh and blood, as 
against principalities and powers of evil angels, 
against the living embodiments of wickedness. 
In the silence and secrecy of our hearts the 
battle goes ever on, unseen, often unknown by 
the world, but very real, very awful, and full 
of destiny. The craft and cunning of our ene- 
mies make it always an anxious struggle, full of 
chances of defeat. They are spiritual, invisible ; 
they never tire, they never sleep. It is only by 
spiritual weapons that they can be overcome. 
It is only by ceaseless vigilance that they can 
be held in check. There is but one armour 
which can equip the Christian soul. The old 
weapons of the warfare of Christ have not 
changed ; they have not grown clumsy and out 
of date. The wisdom of the ages has invented 
none better. The dint of past conflict which 
they bear only assures us of their power to repel 
our present foes. The girdle of truth and sin- 
cerity, the breastplate of the righteousness of 
Christ, the firm-shod sandals of the gospel of 



The Mystery of Godliness. 145 

peace, the sheltering helmet of the hope of sal- 
vation, and, above all, the broad, well-rounded, 
and brightly polished shield of the Catholic 
Faith, these constitute the only safe armour for 
the human soul. These are able to quench all 
the fiery darts of the wicked. Having put on 
the whole armour, the panoply of God, we shall 
be able to withstand in the evil day when we 
are beset by the hosts of sin, and having done 
all to stand undismayed while the battle rages 
fiercely round. 1 

But we are not left to our own devices in our 
warfare against sin. In order to confront our 
spirtual foes we need the help of spirtual forces 
readier and more mighty than they. God has 
provided us with such help. 

1. Over against the evil angels of satan are 
arrayed the good angels of God, more and 
mightier than they. Ceaselessly and tirelessly 
to and fro they go to carry on the far-reaching 
works of God. The unseen universe is filled 
with their busy life. On every Christian soul 
they wait, over every Christian life they watch, 
as those who must give account to God of their 
ministries among men. The sight of them in 
all their purity and power would strike us to the 
ground. They are our defenders in the hard- 
fought fight, a vast cloud of witnesses who 

1 Ephes. vi. u -if. 



146 Fifth Week — Saturday. 

hover o'er the battle-field of human life, ready 
to lend a hand in time of need, mighty to save 
us from the hosts of sin. 

2. But we have something still better than 
this, an ever-present divine help in time of 
need. The Holy Spirit, who sanctifieth us and 
all the people of God, is at work in the world. 
He toileth tirelessly in human souls. He re- 
sisteth mightily the assaults of sin upon the 
human heart. He is the divine, omnipotent 
Protector of every soul. We are not left com- 
fortless before the Mystery of Iniquity, to fight 
out a lonely battle within ourselves as best we 
may in our own puny strength. When our 
Blessed Lord ascended into Heaven He did not 
leave us to our foes. He united with His 
Father in sending us another Comforter, an- 
other Champion, who should be our defense 
against all our enemies. The first great work 
which he promised that the Holy Spirit should 
do was to " reprove the world of sin," to com- 
bat the powers of evil in the world, and ulti- 
mately to root them out. This blessed work 
He is now carrying on. Day by day the 
enemies of the Cross of Christ are being beaten 
back and the domain of sin is being narrowed 
down. We need have no fear of the final re- 
sult. The armies of God will prevail, the Divine 
Comforter will fulfill His blessed task, and the 



The Mystery of Godliness. 147 

Mystery of Iniquity will be swallowed up in the 
Mystery of Godliness. The operation of the 
Holy Ghost is a great mystery, but it is one of 
the chief certainties of the Christian Faith, upon 
which we can depend with absolute confidence. 
Let us then take courage in our warfare against 
sin, and give thanks to God for having sent His 
holy angels and His Holy Ghost "to succour 
and defend us on earth," while our Saviour 
pleads for us before the Throne of Heaven. 



SIXTH WEEK IN LENT. 
tfc (tttasferg &>& buffering- 



MONDAY. 

BETRAYAL. 



" See that thou make all things according to the pattern 
shewed to thee in the mount." — Hebrews viii. 5. 

God laid this injunction on Moses, when he 
was about to make a tabernacle where men 
might meet Him in the wilderness. He seems 
to lay it upon us in a still more solemn way 
to-day. We have been thus far during Lent 
learning how to strive for the mastery over 
self, over satan, over the world, over adversity, 
over sin. We have yet to learn how to gain 
the mastery over suffering and death. In this 
sacred study there is but one Great Teacher to 
whom we can turn, there is no other school 
like the School of Calvary. Henceforth in our 
striving after the mastery, we must see that we 
make all things after the pattern shewed us in 
the mount. During the rest of this holy tide, 



Betrayal. 1 49 

we must determine to know nothing but Jesus 
Christ and Him crucified. Let us gather closely 
round our Suffering Lord, and learn of Him, 
withdrawing further from the world than we 
have done thus far, and hiding ourselves with 
Him in God. 

First let us go to Gethsemane. It is past 
midnight. Through the gnarled trunks and 
pale green foliage of the olive trees, the full 
paschal moon is shining, chequering the scene 
with moving masses of light and shade. Prone 
upon the ground in one of the more secluded 
recesses of the garden, lies a human form con- 
vulsed with an agony of grief. About a stone's 
throw from the Sufferer, lie three men asleep. 
Along the dusty road, not far from the garden 
gate, moves a black mass of men, armed with 
swords and staves. The stillness is rudely 
broken by the red glare of their torches, and 
the clashing of their arms. At their head 
moves a familiar form. He enters at the gate 
and approaches the Sufferer, now risen from 
the ground and awaiting him with calm and 
awful dignity. He flings himself upon His 
neck, sobbing "Master, Master," and kisses 
Him again and again. "The Son of Man is 
betrayed into the hands of sinners/' 

Earlier in this same fateful night the Sufferer 
has with deep emotion warned this man^ His 



150 Sixth Week — Monday \ 

chosen disciple, that he is about to betray Him. 
Only a few moments ago His human soul was 
wrung with grief at the thought of that which 
was to come. But now He is serene, untroubled, 
benignant. How sharply those false kisses 
stung His cheek, we cannot guess. How deep 
was the wound in His tender heart, we, with 
our duller sensibilities, can never know. "It 
is not an open enemy that hath done Me this 
dishonour, for then I could have borne it; 
neither was it mine adversary that did magnify 
himself against me, for then, peradventure, I 
would have hid myself from him; but it was 
even thou, my companion, my guide, and mine 
own familiar friend. We took sweet counsel 
together, and walked in the house of God as 
friends." z So the Sufferer seems to say within 
Himself, but He does not add the curse of 
David, " Let death come hastily upon him, and 
let him go down quick into hell." 2 He makes, 
instead, one last pathetic appeal, "Judas, be- 
trayest thou the Son of Man with a kiss ? " to 
wake him to repentence, if it were possible. 
Beyond this, there is not a word of blame. His 
appeal is simply this, " Judge thyself, that thou 
be not judged." And then He gives Himself 
into the hands of His enemies. " He will not 
strive nor cry, neither shall any man hear His 

1 Psalm lv. 13-15. 2 Psalm lv. 16. 



Betrayal. 151 

voice in the streets." x He is a patient, silent 
sufferer. He will not complain, nor condemn, 
nor curse, though one of His beloved disciples 
has betrayed Him, and all the rest have for- 
saken Him and fled. He will bury His grief 
in His own heart, and speak only to heal and 
to bless. 

Here is our Divine Ensample, then, to teach us 
how to bear such betrayals as may fall to our 
lot. When friends fail, and we find that our 
surest confidence has been misplaced, and we 
are plunged into the sharp agony which the dis- 
covery of human faithlessness brings home to 
the heart, what shall we do ? Do as Jesus did. 
Speak not one word but such as He spoke. 
Warn the betrayer, if it be not too late, of the 
awful nature of his act ; plead with him to 
remedy the evil, if he can, not so much for our 
sake as for his own. And then suffer in silence, 
giving ourselves up entirely into God's hands. 
If it seems to Him good, He can send " more 
than twelve legions of angels " to rescue us 
from the hands that are stretched out to smite 
us. If he does not, then we may be quite sure 
that in God's book it is written of us, as it was 
of the sinless Sufferer, " that thus it must be." 2 
Our agony of betrayal, great though it may 
seem to us, will be but slight compared with 

1 St. Matt. xii. 19. 2 St. Matt. xxvi. 53, 54. 



I5 2 Sixth Week — Monday. 

His, and we have His splendid example to show 
us how to master it. Like Him, let us meet it 
with uncomplaining reliance upon God. 

One thought more. How did the human soul 
of our Lord gain the strength to meet this great 
crisis of His earthly life ? When He stepped 
forth from the shadows of the garden into the 
moonlight there was about Him a sense of 
sublime confidence, a kingly majesty, which 
scared the lookers-on, and smote the soldiers to 
the ground, and made Him the commanding 
figure of the group. His disciples, who in the 
garden had slumbered and slept, were blinded 
and alarmed. But their Master stood undis- 
mayed in the presence of His enemies, and 
calmly suffered Himself to be led into what He 
knew to be the Valley of the Shadow of Death. 
What was it that made the difference ? What 
was the source of His splendid strength in that 
awful hour ? The reply is plain. He had 
prayed in Gethsemane, and He came forth in 
the power of prayer. It shone in His face, it 
spoke in the tones of His voice, it surrounded 
Him with an atmosphere of sanctity, it made 
Him a king among men. It was as the Lion 
of the tribe of Judah that He came out to con- 
front His enemies. 

A life of prayer will do the same for us. 
Communion with God, fervent prayer made 



Betrayal. 153 

without ceasing, and deepened into agonizing 
earnestness as the time of trial draws nigh, 
this is the only discipline which will strengthen 
us to endure the faithlessness of man. It is the 
only thing that will enable us to meet our be- 
trayers as our blessed Master did. If we would 
make all things after the pattern shown us by 
Him upon the mount, we must first go with 
Him to Gethsemane. 



SIXTH WEEK IN LENT. 

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TUESDAY. 

MISJUDGMENT. 



" He was oppressed, and He was afflicted, yet He opened not 
His mouth : He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a 
sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His 
mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment.' ' — 
Isaiah liii. 7, 8, 

To what an awful extent were these words 
fulfilled in the suffering life of our Lord! 
When "He was numbered with the transgress- 
ors/' the overflowing fullness of human mis- 
judgment was emptied out upon Him. 

Consider first the misjudgments of His early- 
life and ministry. The dark cloud of human 
injustice hung over Him from the first. Men 
whispered charges of impurity against the spot- 
less Virgin Mother who brought Him into the 
world. They openly ridiculed His humble 
origin. "Can any good come out of Naza- 



Misjudgment. 155 

reth ? " J " Is not this the carpenter's son ? " 2 
The fanatical Scribes and Pharisees cried out, 
" Behold a man gluttonous, and a wine-bibber, 
a friend of publicans and sinners." 3 When 
He worked mighty miracles, they refused to 
give God the glory. "This fellow doth not 
cast out devils, but by Beelzebub, the prince of 
the devils." * The stupid, sodden indifference 
of the worldly world forced Him to cry out 
against it, " O, faithless and perverse genera- 
tion, how long shall I be with you ? how long 
shall I suffer you ? " -s The gross incapacity 
even of His chosen followers to grasp the true 
greatness of His character and work wrung 
from Him the complaint, " O, fools and slow 
of heart to believe all that the prophets have 
spoken." 6 Consider the constant heavy load of 
blind, ignorant, prejudiced misjudgment which 
He had to bear, and try to realize the splendid 
patience with which He carried it through life 
and down to the grave. 

Dwell next in thought upon the misjudgment 
of Caiaphas, and try to think how terribly the 
sensitive human soul of our Lord must have 
suffered in the palace of that false and cruel 
High Priest, When under cover of night, and 

i St. John i. 46. 4 St Matt. xii. 24. 

2 St. Matt. xiii. 55. 5 St. Matt. xvii. 17. 

3 St. Matt. xi. 19. 6 St. Luke xxiv. 25. 



156 Sixth Week — Tuesday. 

by the help of base treachery, he dragged the 
Sufferer into that corrupt court which he thus 
made forever infamous, to inflict upon Him 
without a shred of evidence a sentence which 
had been determined long before, he showed 
the world what awful depths of wickedness 
there are in man. What that mock trial, with 
its shameful travesties of justice, its fierce out- 
bursts of envy, hatred, andjmalice, and its cruel 
indignities — what that trial was to Him we can 
but dimly comprehend. For the Only-begotten 
Son of God to be put on trial by His own High 
Priest, and condemned as a common criminal 
by the rulers of His own peculiar people, was 
an indignity too deep for human thought to 
fathom it. But how did our Divine Example 
receive the injustice which was heaped upon 
Him ? Except for a brief refusal to testify 
before such a court, He kept still silence. 
While false witnesses annihilated each other's 
testimony, when a minion of the court struck 
Him in the face, while the High Priest raged 
upon his throne, He held His peace until at last 
the time came for Him to speak. Then, at 
length, not before that corrupt court, but in the 
great audience of the universe, did He open 
His mouth and confess Himself the Son of 
God. He would not speak one word to save 
Himself from the sentence which hung over 



Misjudgment. 157 

Him, but under the most solemn oath He de- 
clared Himself the divine Judge of all the earth. 
He met the sentence of Caiaphas by an appeal 
to a Higher Court. 

Think next of the misjudgment of Herod. 
When that dissolute monarch saw Jesus led into 
the gloomy palace where he was idling away 
the Passover time, " He was exceeding glad, 
for he was desirous to see Him of a long season, 
because he had heard many things of Him, and 
he hoped to have seen some miracle done by 
Him." x He instantly forgot his responsibility 
as a judge in the interest of a new and exciting 
experience. He received the Prisoner gra- 
ciously, questioned Him at great length, and 
no doubt urged Him to work a miracle then 
and there. But not one word would the 
Majestic Sufferer vouchsafe to the vile, hardened 
criminal who sat upon his kingly throne. There 
was not a spark of conscience left in Herod to 
which he could appeal. Had there been, this 
painful silence would have been the mightiest 
appeal that could be made. Before such a 
tribunal, our Lord would not open His mouth. 
He was silent that the voice of John the Baptist 
might be heard crying from the grave. 

Finally, let us consider the misjudgment of 
Pontius Pilate. As we trace his proceedings, 

i St. Luke xxiii. 8. 



158 Sixth Week — Tuesday. 

step by step, we find that his whole course, 
while the Sufferer was in his hands, was one of 
low, worldly policy. The merits of the case 
were plain enough to his practised eye. He 
declared over and over again, " I find no fault 
in Him at all." The Passion of our Blessed 
Lord has been described as a touchstone of 
character, revealing the secrets of all hearts 
which came within its reach. When Pilate was 
put to the test, it showed his utter lack of 
principle, and made him for all time the awful 
example of an unjust judge. Let us try for a 
moment to realize what it must have been for 
our Lord, with His keen sense of truth and 
right, to feel Himself in such hands. How deep 
for Him must have been the humiliation of 
being made a victim of Pilate's wretched policy 
of expediency, dragged to and fro in chains, 
subjected to the coarse insults of the cruel 
soldiery ? His sacred body lacerated by scourges 
and the crown of thorns, and finally given up 
to death at the demand of a bloodthirsty mob. 
And all this, while His judge openly proclaimed 
His innocence. 

Let us learn from our Lord's majestic silence 
and self-control in this last stage of His trial, as 
in all the rest, a lesson for the conduct of our 
own life. We shall have to meet the same 
forms of misjudgment which he endured. We 



Misjudgment. 159 

shall encounter the misjudgment of pride and 
prejudice, as embodied in Caiaphas; of the 
curious cynical world, as in Herod; of weak, 
worldly policy which dare not champion the 
right, as in Pilate. Let us meet them with the 
same silent dignity, the same uncomplaining 
patience, and the same steadfast trust in God, 
as the Great Sufferer did. 



SIXTH WEEK IN LENT. 

£0e (gtasfere <2>et JSuff ering- 



WEDNESDAY. 

POVERTY. 



u Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though 
He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through 
His poverty might be rich." — II. Cor. viii. g, 

Do we indeed know this ? Have we realized 
the extreme poverty in which the Son of God 
dwelt upon earth ? Let us meditate upon it 
to-day. 

Take His early life. Begun in a stable among 
beasts of the stall; its infancy deprived of a 
home and driven into a foreign land ; thrust 
aside into the obscurity of Nazareth and the 
humble toil of a carpenter's shop ; shorn of all 
the advantages and opportunities which the 
world deems desirable for childhood and youth, 
it was from the first a life of absolute poverty. 
Beyond the companionship of a few loving souls, 
bound to Him by the ties of human relationship, 



Poverty. 1 6 1 

the Holy Child Jesus had nothing to satisfy the 
cravings of His humanity. He went to the last 
extremity of want, and yet how rich His life 
was in itself. It needed not anything which 
this world had to give. 

Take His public life. He had absolutely none 
of those things which the world holds dear. He 
had no longer any home. "The foxes have 
holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but 
the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head." x 
He had no worldly wealth. The bag which held 
the scanty alms which bought His daily bread 
was held by a thief. The garments which shel- 
tered the sacred form were not bought with a 
price, but made and given by some generous, 
loving hand. The days and nights were full of 
toil which brought no reward in this world. 
He sat sometimes at the tables of the rich, but 
only by sufferance, as a guest. His intercourse 
was chiefly with the poor and destitute. The 
only record which identifies Him with the rich 
is, " He made His grave with the rich in His 
death." 2 The life of Christ in the world was 
the most poverty-stricken of all lives. When 
He came to the end of it, there was not in all 
the wide world one thing which as man He could 
call His own, except the Cross on which He 
hung. 

i St. Matt. viii. 20. 2 Isaiah liii. 9. 



1 62 Sixth Week — Wednesday* 

It may be said that this was in accordance 
with His own desires, that He had not sought 
for worldly goods but for souls. It was for 
them that He had come, and toiled, and bled, and 
was to die. They were His wealth. Yes, it is 
true. But out of all the world how many of 
them had He won ? Abraham hoped to find 
fifty men in Sodom like-minded with himself, 
for whose sake the city should be saved. Elijah 
had his seven thousand in Israel who had not 
bowed the knee to Baal, and his hundred 
prophets of the Lord, hidden in a cave. But 
hear the Son of Man counting up His wealth of 
souls on the last night of His ministry. ' ' Father, 
the hour is come. I have manifested Thy Name 
unto the men which Thou gavest me out of the 
world ; Thine they were, and Thou gavest them 
me ; and they have kept Thy word. And now 
I am no more in the world, but these are in the 
world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep 
through Thine own Name those whom Thou 
hast given me, that they may be one as we are 
one. While I was with them in the world, I kept 
them in Thy Name. Those that Thou gavest 
me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but 
the son of perdition." x How many souls were 
there whom He could call His own ? Twelve 
human souls given Him by His Father out of 

i St. John xvii. I, 6, II, 12. 



Poverty. 163 

all the millions of living men, and one of them 
has become a devil and is lost ! Beside them a 
little band of timid, bewildered, half-believing 
disciples, a few holy women, and that is all. 
Here are summed up the entire results of His 
ministry among men, here is His whole harvest 
of souls. How few, how pitifully, awfully few! 
O the depth of the poverty of the Son of Man, 
even in that which held most dear ! 

It has always been so. It is so still. How 
terribly few out of all mankind, since Christ was 
lifted up upon the Cross, have been drawn unto 
Him ! Our loving Lord is still poor. It is but 
a scanty harvest of souls which His hired ser- 
vants have gleaned in the field of the world. 
There is many a sheep that is lost from the 
Good Shepherd's fold and has not been found. 

The lesson which we learn from the Great 
Sufferer to-day is the blessedness of poverty, 
and a hard lesson it is. Do we find it so ? Do 
we feel that God has given us very little in this 
world ? Do we see others, w 7 ho are not serving 
Him, who have enough and to spare ? Do we 
have to practice economy, deny ourselves, incur 
the scornful pity of the world ? Do we feel 
that, after all, the results of our life are pitifully 
small, that ' c we have toiled all the night and 
taken nothing, ,, that our life is almost a failure ? 
Then let us learn from the poverty of the Son 



164 Sixth Week — Wednesday. 

of Man to be content with what God permits 
us to do and to have. We cannot always make 
a true estimate of our accomplishments in this 
world. They may prove greater than we think, 
when we see them in the light of the Great 
Judgment Day. If they do not, they will at 
least be greater than we had any right to ask or 
expect. " It is enough for the disciple that he 
be as his master, and the servant as his lord." 1 

Christian poverty is a blessing in disguise. 
While we meditate upon it and try to receive it 
as we ought, let us see that we make our pov- 
erty after the pattern shewed us in the mount. 
His was a voluntary poverty which He chose 
of His own free will and accord. He deliber- 
ately made Himself poor in this world that He 
might be rich in the next. Even so, poverty, 
welcomed and embraced for Christ's sake, would 
be for us the truest wealth. He made Himself 
poor in this world that He might enrich all 
human life. Poverty had no power to thwart 
the great work which He had come to do. His 
life, His teachings, His kingdom did not fail 
because of His poverty. They really profited 
by it. It will be so with us. Poverty, borne 
not grudgingly and of necessity, but welcomed 
as the will of God for us, or brought upon our- 
selves in the effort to make others rich, is bound 
1 St. Matt. x. 25. 



Poverty. 165 

to be a state of great blessedness. Thrice blessed 
is that glorious poverty which some have brought 
upon themselves in the generous expenditure of 
their worldly goods for the saving of human 
souls. What better thing can be said of any of 
us at the end of life than this: u He made Him- 
self poor, but He made others rich, rich with 
the unsearchable riches of Christ." 



SIXTH WEEK IN LENT. 
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THURSDAY. 

BODILY SUFFERING. 



" The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From 
the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in 
it, but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores ; they have not 
been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment." 
— Isaiah i. j, <5. 

To-day let the Chief Sufferer teach us how 
all bodily suffering should be borne. We may- 
pass hastily over the toils and trials of His 
early life and ministry, the flight into Egypt, 
the hunger and thirst, the weary journeyings to 
and fro, the watchings and fastings, the unre- 
mitting toil. We may pass over these and 
come at once to the last Holy Week of His 
earthly ministry. We shall find enough and 
more than enough of bodily suffering in that. 

It is an awful thing to see how truly the Son 
of Man could say of Himself, " There is no 



Bodily Suffering. 167 

whole part in My body," l how every member 
of His human frame shared in His sufferings. 
Consider. His sacred head was crowned with 
cruel thorns in mockery of His kingly claims. 
Upon His brow were gathered great drops of 
bloody sweat, showing how His body shared in 
the agony of His soul. His eyes were tortured 
by the sight of His exectioners^ the grief and 
desertion of His followers, the fanatic fury of 
His murderers. They were scorched by bitter 
tears. His ears were deafened by the horrid 
din of denials, mockeries, and false accusations 
which followed Him even to the Cross and 
clamoured round Him there. His cheeks were 
stung with shameful blows, and drenched with 
spittle from the coarse mouths of the soldiery. 
His lips were defiled by a traitor's kiss, and 
rudely struck by a minion of the High Priest's 
court. His tongue was parched with thirst, 
they gave Him gall and vinegar to drink. His 
shoulders were lacerated by the scourge and 
bruised by the heavy cross. His side was 
pierced with a spear. Rough nails were driven 
through the delicate nerves of His hands and 
feet. He died of a broken heart. His whole 
body was so bruised and torn that you might 
"tell all His bones." "From the sole of the 
foot even unto the head, there is no soundness 

1 Psalm xxxviii. 7. 



1 68 Sixth Week — Thursday \ 

in it." And to the description of His wounds 
we may add the prophet's words, "They have 
not been closed, neither bound up, neither 
mollified with ointment. ,, It was an awful 
aggravation of His bodily suffering that there 
was no gentle loving hand to dress His wounds. 
He seemed forsaken by God and man in the 
time of His sorest need. 

We need no more to convince us that our 
Blessed Lord was the Chief of Sufferers. His 
capacity for suffering was far beyond that of 
any of the children of men. None of us can 
ever suffer so keenly as He could. Nor will any 
of us ever be called upon to endure such a list of 
tortures as that which we have just enumerated. 
Some of us will have pains and sufferings arising 
from the weakness of our flesh, and a few will 
have insulting blows as a part of our discipline. 
But even at the worst our bodily sufferings will 
be but slight compared with His. It will never 
be possible for us to say with such literal truth 
as did He, that there is no whole part in our 
body. Nor will any of our sufferings be so 
undeserved as His. Ours are but seldom brought 
upon us by the injustice or malignity of enemies. 
They are generally only the inevitable results 
of our own folly and self-indulgence and sin. 
If we would confess the truth, we should cry 
out as did the penitent thief upon the cross, 



Bodily Suffering. 169 

"We indeed justly, for we receive the due 
reward of our deeds, but this man hath done 
nothing amiss." z In all respects then, in ex- 
tent, in intensity, and in brutality, ' ' our light 
affliction which is but for a moment" is not to 
be compared with His deeper sufferings. We 
can only follow Him a little way into the hidden 
depths of His suffering life. But if we are to 
be made like unto Him, we must take those 
few steps, and must see that they are planted 
in the way where Christ has gone before. 

How then shall we bear the fewer and lighter 
bodily sufferings which may fall to our lot ? Let 
us look upon the Great Sufferer, and see how He 
bears Himself amidst the most unmerited inju- 
ries and excruciating pains. We find Him abso- 
lute master of Himself. He does not shrink from 
the scourge, or the crown of thorns, or even 
from the Cross. He makes no protest against 
the injustice and cruelty of His persecutors. 
He utters not one word of complaint throughout 
the whole long tragedy of suffering. He seems 
all along to be saying within Himself, " I have 
a baptism to be baptised with, and how am I 
straitened until it be accomplished ! " 2 The 
quenchless light of a great purpose shines in His 
eyes. His face is benignant, radiant with un- 
broken peace and serenity. His lips are opened 

1 St. Luke xxiii. 41. z^St. Luke xii. 50. 



170 Sixth Week — Thursday, 

only to warn and to bless. His whole body, 
even when smarting under the lash and quiver- 
ing on the Cross, is under a sublime self-con- 
trol. It suffers in every part, but the tireless 
patience of the Great Sufferer supports Him to 
the bitter end. There is one splendid fact 
which enables Him to endure all things, even 
that eternal truth which He had asserted long 
before, " I and my Father are one." 

Here is our great lesson then. It was the 
serene consciousness of unbroken union with 
the Father, which lifted Him aloft and enabled 
Him to endure as seeing Him who is invisible. 
This was the secret of His strength. Just so 
it is the assurance of union with Christ in His 
sufferings which will support us in the hour 
of mortal grief and pain. To take our suffer- 
ings and unite them with those of Christ, and 
offer them to God with His, is to sweeten and 
sanctify them and take away all in them that 
was terrible. If borne with patience for Christ's 
sake, with devout recollection of those greater 
pains which He endured for us, our bodily afflic- 
tions will work no harm to our souls, but will 
only conform us closer to our suffering Lord. 
St. Peter urges this truth upon his converts 
with convincing force in words which we ought 
never to forget. " Beloved, think it not strange 
concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as 



Bodily Suffering. ijl 

though some strange thing happened unto you. 
But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of 
Christ's sufferings; that when His glory shall 
be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceed- 
ing joy." * 

* I St. Peter iv. 12, 13. 



SIXTH WEEK IN LENT. 
Z§* QJtasfetg £>uer buffeting* 

FRIDAY. 

MENTAL SUFFERING. 



"My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.' ' — St. 
Matt. xxvi. 38. 

While we recognize the greatness of the 
bodily sufferings of our Blessed Lord, we must 
remember that in the garden, in the judgment 
hall, and on the Cross they were exceeded by 
the sufferings of His soul. Perhaps the bodily 
sufferings appeal more directly to us and seem 
the more shameful to our minds, but evidently 
to Him they were not so. His severest, crud- 
est agony was of the mind and heart. There 
is abundant evidence that He was sometimes so 
absorbed in the travail of His soul as to be 
almost unconscious of physical pain. 

To-day let us try to think what it was which 
made His soul so exceeding sorrowful. 

1. The ingratitude of men. There were so 
many who had heard His gracious words, so 



Mental Suffering. 1 73 

few who believed in Him. Out of all that 
wide, wicked world, which He was dying to 
save, there were so few who acknowledged what 
He was doing for them, so many who would 
not come to Him that they might have life. 
The great stupid, sodden, sinful world held 
blindly on its way, unmindful of its Saviour's 
tears, and pains, and death. Even "His own/' 
the few faithful souls who loved Him and had 
clung to Him, were now amongst the chief 
causes of His grief. Judas had betrayed Him, 
Peter had denied Him, and all the rest had 
deserted Him and fled. All but one of them 
would return to Him again, and none of them 
would be lost save the son of perdition. But 
for vast multitudes of living men His sufferings 
and death would be in vain. His soul was torn 
with an awful sense of the loss of souls by their 
own blindness and unbelief. 

2. He felt also the scorn of men. It dogged 
His footsteps everywhere He went, opposed 
Him all through His ministry, clamoured for His 
life before the judgment seat, and culminated 
round His Cross. As we look on, it seems to us 
a strange and almost incomprehensibly cruel 
thing that men could thus scorn their Saviour 
and their God. We shudder at the sight. But 
what must it have been to Him ! How sharply 
must every hateful act and word of scorn have 



174 Sixth Week — Friday. 

stung His tender heart ! How deeply must His 
kingly soul have resented every insult which 
was aimed at Him ! The mind of man cannot 
fathom the mind of Christ, nor can we probe 
the wounds inflicted in it by the scorn of men. 
But we can comprehend enough of them to 
overwhelm us with shame and horror at the 
desperate wickedness which could inflict such 
cruel wounds upon the heart of our loving 
Lord. 

3. Consider, too, how our Sinless Saviour 
suffered from contact with sin. What was it 
that made the agony of Gethsemane so intense ? 
It was sin, the sins of the whole world, the 
great black mass of human sinfulness which 
loomed so large as to darken the whole horizon 
of His mind. The time had come for Him to 
take upon Him the iniquity of us all. But if 
He was to take away the sins of the world, He 
must touch them, they must come home to 
Him, He must feel the weight of them. This 
close contact with sin was one of the things 
which made him so exceeding sorrowful in 
Gethsemane. 

Even to us, with our hardened hearts, the 
sight of gross and sensual sin is terrible; we 
shudder and shrink away from it. But what 
must it have been to His pure eyes and spot- 
less soul ? Sin was unspeakably hateful to 



Mental Suffering. 175 

Him, His soul recoiled violently from its pres- 
ence, and suffered keenly so long as it was in 
sight. No wonder then that when the accumu- 
lated wickedness of our fallen race, from the 
sin of the first Adam down to the last crime 
which shall be committed to the end of time, 
when this mighty mass of evil gathered itself 
up and fell with its full weight upon Him, no 
wonder that it crushed Him to the earth. No 
wonder that as he felt Himself enveloped in its 
loathsome embrace, " His sweat was as it were 
great drops of blood falling down to the 
ground." x It is not strange that as he looked 
into the depths of the bitter cup of human 
iniquity He cried in agony, " O my Father, if 
it be possible, let this cup pass from me." 2 But 
it was not possible. God had put it to His lips, 
and He drank it to the dregs. 

4. Finally, let us think of the suffering which 
was involved in His separation from God. He 
hung upon the Cross as the Lamb of God which 
was to take away the sin of the world, the 
Second Adam in whom were summed up the 
destinies of the human race. His sacred 
humanity was in the closest relationship with 
mankind. But mankind was deep sunk in sin, 
had corrupted itself, and was in rebellion 
against God. If He was to be identified with 

1 St. Luke xxii. 44. 2 St. Matt. xxvi. 36. 



176 Sixth Week — Friday. 

it, to be its representative, it was inevitable 
that His human nature must feel the weight of 
God's displeasure against sin. The dark 
shadows of sin must gather round His human 
soul, and while he bears the burden of a world's 
sins He must feel the terrible desolation of a 
soul that is cut off from God. " He made Him 
to be sin for us, who knew no sin." 1 

This it was, as we may reverently think, 
which drew from Him that horror-stricken cry, 
the most appalling sound ever heard by the ears 
of man, "My God, My God, why hast thou 
forsaken Me ? " His human soul had thus far 
dwelt in the light of the Father's countenance, 
but now " God made as though He heard Him 
not," and He "become like them that go down 
into the pit." 2 

Such were some of the chief things which our 
Lord suffered in His soul. In proportion as we 
are Christlike, shall we comprehend these suf- 
ferings, and shall they be laid upon us. Thus 
we may judge ourselves, that we be not judged 
of God. Let us ask ourselves to-day what is 
our estimate of sin. Can we look upon it with 
composure ? Do we suffer at the sight of it ? 
Does the consciousness of the world's sin bur- 
den our souls, and distress us as it did our 
righteous Lord ? Do we feel the weight of the 

1 II. Cor. v. 21. 2 Psalm xxviii. 1. 



Mental Suffering. 177 

sins of our lost race resting heavily upon our 
hearts, and making a great gulf between God 
and man ? Are we sensitive to sin or not ? 
Here is an unfailing index of our soul's health. 
Unless we are keenly alive to the terrible havoc 
which sin has made and is making in God's 
world, we have not the mind of Christ. Unless 
we sorrow over the sins of men, and grieve 
because of our own wickedness, it is not well 
with our souls. 



SIXTH WEEK IN LENT. 
£0e (gtasferg but buffering* 



SATURDAY. 

THE REWARD OF SUFFERING. 



" Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself and 
became obedient unto death, even unto the death of the cross. 
Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a 
name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus 
every knee should bow." — Phil. i. 8, 9, io. 

Passion Week is drawing to its close. Day 
by day we have tried to realize the Passion of 
our Lord more clearly than before. To-day we 
may turn to its reward. 

How sweet it must have been to Him after 
the toil, the agony, the Cross — to enter into His 
reward ! How full of restful satisfaction must 
have been the Sabbath calm in which He 
awaited the dawn of the great Easter Day! 
We can measure the sweetness of the rest by 
the bitterness of the suffering. But how shall 
we even faintly imagine the blessedness of the 
reward? How shall we realize the joy of re- 



The Reward of Suffering. 179 

union with the Father in Heaven, the satisfac- 
tion of having finished the work His Father 
had given Him to do, the peace of Paradise 
following so close upon the horror of Calvary? 
How imperfectly after all do we grasp the 
meaning of the old familiar words : 

" The strife is o'er, the battle done ; 
The victory of life is won, 
The song of triumph is begun." 

We sing them with some gladness on Easter 
Day, but do we ever stop to think how much 
they meant to our Lord and His few faithful 
followers, how much they ought to mean to us? 
How shall we estimate the eternal weight of 
glory which was purchased for them and for us 
by His sufferings? That glory could never 
have been reached except through the way of 
sorrows which He trod. Without the Cross 
there would have been no crown for the Son of 
Man. The sufferings of our Lord were the 
steep and painful steps which led up to the 
throne of His glory. It was obedience unto 
death, even the death of the Cross, which gave 
Him a Name which is above every name. 

Let us learn from our Lord's Passion a lesson 
for ourselves. We shall have some suffering to 
bear in this world whether we will or no. But 
there are two ways in which we may bear it. We 
may meet it as Christ did, or as the world does. 



180 Sixth Week — Saturday. 

i. The world regards all suffering as an un- 
mixed evil. It considers poverty, and pain, 
and disaster, and death as terrible calamities. 
It dreads them, shuns them, writhes under 
their unwelcome weight, and struggles vio- 
lently to shake them off. It never says: "It 
is good for me that I have been in trouble, ' ' x 
as David did. It makes no use of suffering, 
and finds no blessing in it. 

2. But the attitude of our divine Lord 
towards suffering was very different. He 
gladly gave Himself up to it and bore it 
patiently and unflinchingly even in its severest 
forms. He gloried in it as an honourable thing. 
He sanctified it and offered it up to the Father 
as something acceptable in His sight. 

We may look upon suffering in either of these 
two lights. We may unite ourselves with the 
world in our sufferings, or with Christ. But 
we must remember that there is no promise 
and no hope attached to" the worldly view of 
suffering. It offers no recompense of reward. 
It bids its votaries bear their afflictions with as 
much stoical self-control as they can command in 
the face of a cruel necessity. But it holds out 
no hope of reward to him who bears them well. 

The Christian view is a much brighter one. 
It is firmly convinced that every trial bravely 

i Psalm cxix. 71. 



The Reward of Suffering. 181 

borne will bring its reward, that every suf- 
fering united with those of Christ will be 
acceptable in the sight of God, that every grief 
may be converted into joy, if welcomed as a 
part of God's wholesome discipline for the 
strengthening of our souls. This is true even 
in the minutest details of our daily life. Even 
petty trials, if borne in the spirit of Christ, 
become a means of grace. 

" The trivial round, the common task, 
Would furnish all we ought to ask ; 
Room to deny ourselves ; a road 
To bring us daily nearer God." * 

Suffering with Christ brings us two great 
rewards : it is strengthening to the soul, and it 
unites us to God. 

i. It is an educative discipline for our souls. 
Sorrow and pain have marvellous power to 
chasten and refine the human heart. There is 
no strong and lofty character which has not 
been matured by suffering, It draws out all 
the latent powers of our being as nothing else 
can. Everyone needs it for the full develop- 
ment of his character. The highest elevations 
of moral virtue can only be reached by those 
who have learned to suffer and be strong. Pain 
is power. The men of sorrow have always 
been men of might. The perfect man is the 
Chief Sufferer who hung upon the Cross. 

i Keble's Christian Year. Morning Hymn. 



1 82 Sixth Week — Saturday. 

2. But the patient endurance of suffering does 
more than strengthen us, it brings us close to 
God. It is sorrow rather than joy that warms 
human sympathy and brings about the fellow- 
ship of kindred minds. It is those who have 
suffered together who know each other best. 
There is a freemasonry of sorrow which arouses 
all the noblest sympathies of the soul. The old 
adage that "Misery loves company/ ' finds its 
highest fulfilment in the Communion of Saints. 
In the Household of Faith 

" We share our mutual woes, 
Our mutual burdens bear, 
And often for each other flows 
The sympathizing tear." 

The power of Christian sympathy is one of the 
mightiest influences in the world. And we are 
indebted for it largely to the existence of 
human suffering. 

But suffering does more than unite us to our 
fellowmen, it draws us close to God. We can 
come nearer to Christ in our sorrows than in 
our joys. Indeed we cannot come into close 
union with Him without suffering. He Him- 
self has said, " If any man will come after me, 
let him deny himself, and take up his cross and 
follow me." x There was so much suffering in 
His earthly ministry, He was so truly a man of 

i St. Matt. xvi. 24. 



The Reward of Suffering. 183 

sorrows and acquainted with grief, that we can- 
not hope to be like Him or to be vitally joined 
with Him until we have become partakers of 
His sufferings. The Way of the Cross is the 
only way to union with God in Christ. Those 
who walk in it to the end have an exceeding 
great reward. It was of a countless multitude 
of such faithful souls whom he saw before the 
throne of God that St. John the Divine was 
told, " These are they which came out of great 
tribulation, and have washed their robes and 
made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 
Therefore are they before the throne of God, 
and serve Him day and night in His temple, 
and He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell 
among them. They shall hunger no more, 
neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun 
light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb 
which is in the midst of the throne shall feed 
them, and shall lead them unto living fountains 
of waters; and God shall wipe away all tears 
from their eyes." x 

1 Revelation vii. 14-17. 



HOLY WEEK. 
t$t (gtft0f erg &wr ©eat 0. 



MONDAY. 
WHAT IS DEATH ? 



" It is appointed unto men once to die." — Hebrews ix. 2J. 

Among all the changes and chances of this 
mortal life there is one great certainty. There 
is one event of which, however we may forget 
it or disguise it, we are sure. We shall die. 
This is the one great fixed fact of the future. 
It is not wise nor safe to blind ourselves to it, 
nor to postpone all thought of it until it comes. 
We shall have to meet death. Let us prepare 
to meet and master it. The record of our 
Lord's death upon the Cross has marvellous 
power to instruct and comfort us. It can teach 
us how to convert death into the birthday of 
immortal life. We have been learning from 
Him how to live. Let us try this week to learn 
from Him how to die. 

To-day let us ask ourselves what is death, 



What is Death? 185 

and what are its results. Death is simply this, 
the separation of two things which God has 
joined together, the parting asunder for a time 
of body and soul. It is not the destruction of 
either of them. It cannot annihilate my body 
nor my soul. My body shall rise again in the 
resurrection at the last day, my soul cannot 
cease to exist. What happens at death is ex- 
actly this — the soul leaves the body, in which 
it has dwelt as in a tenement, to go for awhile 
into another sphere of life where it is no longer 
"in the flesh," but "in the spirit. ,, Meantime 
" my flesh also shall rest in hope," 1 in hope of 
that great day when body shall be joined again 
to soul, and they shall be forever one. Death 
then is the separation of the body from the 
soul. 

No doubt one of the chief reasons why we 
dread the approach of death is because it is the 
great separator. It is natural for us to fear 
death. It is so mighty, so resistless, so mys- 
terious a power that we cannot think of it with- 
out awe, we cannot face it without anxiety. 
We see it doing its silent work, and we are 
afraid of it. It takes some fair human body, 
perhaps in the full vigour of health, perhaps 
wasted by disease, and separates it from the 
indwelling soul. It takes human lives and lifts 

1 Psalm xvi. IO. 



1 86 Holy Week— Monday. 

them out of all the surroundings of which they 
seemed a part, snatches them away from busi- 
ness, and society, and home, and sets them into 
a new environment. It breaks short off, some- 
times very ruthlessly, the associations, and 
friendships, and affectionate intercourse of this 
world, separates families, comes between hus- 
band and wife, and . converts the life of those 
who are left into channels which are new and 
strange. Yes, death is the great separator, and 
we cannot think of it as such without some 
sense of dread. 

But we shall find comfort in the thought that 
its separations are only for a time. The soul 
and body which it has parted asunder shall 
surely be rejoined for all eternity. The time 
shall come when death will have no more 
dominion over them. The kindred souls which 
have been bound together in this life, but 
which the cold hand of death has parted for 
awhile, shall not be kept eternally apart. For 
it is true that now in the time of this mortal 
life we are choosing our surroundings and asso- 
ciations for eternity. Those whom we love 
here and with whom we cast in our lot now will 
be our companions throughout all the life to 
come. If we identify ourselves with those who 
know not God, who care only for this present 
world, whose influence is downward all the 



What is Death? 187 

time, we shall have our place with them for- 
evermore. If we have loved and sought here 
upon earth the presence of God and the com- 
panionship of holy souls, we shall have our 
portion with them hereafter. It is an almost 
overpowering thought; the associations and 
friendships of to-day — we are making them for 
eternity. If they are good and true and pure, 
such shall they be forevermore. If they are 
false and base and contaminating to the soul, 
we shall be dragged down and enchained by 
them everlastingly. Our environment after 
death will be the same which we have chosen 
for ourselves upon earth. It will be true of us 
as it was with Judas, each of us will ' ' go to his 
own place." z To die is to join that innumer- 
able company of departed souls, like-minded 
with ourselves, with whom our course of life in 
this world, whether good or evil, has fitted us 
to dwell eternally. And if some whom we have 
loved be left behind and lost awhile, they, too, 
will soon be united with us by death. Let us 
remember, then, that if death separates, it also 
unites. 

But death is not only a great separator, it is also 
a great liberator. Think how it sets the soul free. 

1. Its bondage to the body is brought to an 
end by death. Those lower appetites which 
1 Acts i. 25. 



1 88 Holy Week — Monday. 

strove to enslave and degrade it are forever 
quenched. That weakness of the flesh which 
hindered all its higher activities is overcome. 
All the ills which flesh was heir to can no 
longer harass and hurt the soul. The long 
struggle between soul and body for the mastery 
is ended now. The immortal soul is free, free 
from the dominion of unruly appetites, free 
from all carnal claims, free to spend its whole 
strength in the pursuit of holiness. Like our 
Lord, we are "put to death in the flesh, but 
quickened by the spirit. ,, x 

2. But more than this. If death finds us at 
peace with God, it sets the soul free from the 
assaults of sin. It snatches the soul away out 
of the reach of sin. After death there shall be 
no more messengers of satan sent to buffet us, 
no more warfare against "evil thoughts which 
may assault and hurt the soul," no more beset- 
ting sins beleaguering the citadel of the soul, 
no more relentless spiritual foes to be grap- 
pled and beaten with heavy blows and brought 
into subjection, no more danger of falling back 
into sin. " Our soul is escaped, even as a bird 
out of the snare of the fowler; the snare is 
broken and we are delivered." 2 When through 
death it entered into life, it died once for all to 
sin. "The body of sin has been destroyed, 
i I. St. Peter iii. 18. 2 Psalm cxxiv. 6. 



What is Death? 189 

that henceforth we should not serve sin. For 
he that is dead is freed from sin." x 

3. Finally, the soul which has been given to 
God is set free from suffering at the hour of 
death. It rests from its labours. For it there 
is no more toil, no more heavy burdens to be 
borne, no more weary struggles to keep in the 
right way. Its disappointments are at an end. 
For it there are no more withered hopes, nor 
dreary loneliness, nor voiceless gloom, nor sink- 
ing of the heart into dark despair. Its afflic- 
tions are forever past. There shall be no more 
pain, nor persecution, nor bitterness, nor blind- 
ing tears, nor farewells, nor cravings unsatis- 
fied, nor iron entering into the soul, nor shall 
there be any more death. But the soul, un- 
clothed, unfettered, free, shall thenceforth live 
mightily unto God. Liberated by the hand of 
death, it has gone 

Home to the Holy Land, 

Home where no shadows fall, 
Home to the golden strand, 

Home to the Monarch' s^Hall, 
Home from all risk of harm, 

Home to the Land of Rest, 
Home to the Father's Arm, 

Home to the Saviour's Breast. 

1 Romans vi. 6, 7. 



HOLY WEEK. 
£0e (gta0ferg <&t>etr <£>eaf0* 



TUESDAY. 

OBEDIENCE UNTO DEATH. 



" O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? 
The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. 
But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our 
Lord Jesus Christ." — I. Cor, xv, 55—57. 

Until our Blessed Lord hung on the Cross 
there had been none in all the human race who 
had not felt the sting of death. That great 
change had been made terrible to them by the 
sense of sin, by the accusing conscience, by the 
deep-rooted opposition of their nature to the 
holy will of God, which made them dread its 
approach. Down to that time death had 
reigned over the whole human race as a con- 
queror. " As by one man sin entered into the 
world, and death by sin; so death passed upon 
all men, for that all have sinned." s There had 

1 Romans v. 12. 



Obedience XJnto Death. 191 

been a few who by miraculous powers had been 
brought back from the grave and restored for a 
time to life in this world. But none of them 
had been emancipated from the dominion of 
death. Some day it would claim them again, 
and then its victory would be complete. But 
Christ upon the Cross changed all that. In the 
perfection of His sinless humanity and in the 
resistless power of His incarnate Godhead, He 
met death upon the battleground of the Cross, 
strove with it for the mastery, and came off 
conqueror, and more than conqueror. Since 
then " death is swallowed up in victory." x 

Let us try during this Holy Week to learn how 
the victory was won. We have found Jesus in 
all the other experiences of life the perfect pat- 
tern of manliness; we shall find Him on the 
Cross the divine ensample of a godly life and 
death. We shall learn from Him how to con- 
quer death. 

To-day let us think of the first weapon by 
which He won His victory. He "humbled 
Himself, and became obedient unto death, even 
unto the death of the cross." 2 

"Obedient." Think how much that means. 
Think of the "Only-begotten Son of God, be- 
gotten of His Father before all worlds, God 
of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, 
1 1. Cor, xv. 54. 2 Phil, ii. 8. 



19 2 Holy Week — Tuesday. 

begotten, not made, being of one substance 
with the Father," obedient unto death as 
though He were the vilest sinner of the whole 
human race. Think of the Incarnate Son, in 
whom ' ' dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead 
bodily," T "who did no sin, neither was guile 
found in His mouth, ,, " bearing our sins in His 
own body on the tree." 2 See the Maker and 
Monarch of all things bowing Himself down to 
death, humbling Himself even to the death 
upon the Cross. " Though He were a Son, yet 
learned He obedience by the things which He 
suffered." 3 

It is a splendid thing to see the obedience of 
our Blessed Lord in the humble home at Naza- 
reth, in the wild wilderness, in the upper room 
at Jerusalem, in Gethsemane, in every act of 
that self-sacrificing life in which He "pleased 
not Himself." But all these shining examples 
of obedience (bright and beautiful as they are) 
grow pale before the crowning glory of His 
obedience unto death. That sublime act of 
obedience was one of the secrets of His ability 
to destroy death. "Being made perfect, He 
became the author of eternal salvation to all 
them that obey Him." 4 Like Samson bowing 
beneath the pillars of Dagon's house, He bent 

i Col. ii. 9. 3 Hebrews v. 8. 

2 I. St. Peter ii. 22-24. 4 Hebrews v. 9. 



Obedience Unto Death. 193 

His body to the Cross, bringing upon Himself 
the crushing weight of the sins of the whole 
world, but forever breaking the power of man's 
great adversary, death. It was through His 
splendid obedience to death as the Son of Man 
that He was able to triumph as the Son of God. 
He stands before the world as the divine-human 
example how to gain the victory over death. 

The first great lesson which we learn from 
the Cross is the lesson of obedience. Let us 
try to impress it deeply upon our hearts to-day 
by emphasizing some special features of our 
Blessed Lord's obedience in the hour of death. 

1. First, let us remember that it was a purely 
voluntary obedience. There was no element 
of compulsion about His death. His sinless hu- 
manity was not subject to the sentence of death 
which had fallen upon all those who were con- 
ceived and born in sin. Death had no right to 
claim Him for its own. His life was entirely 
in His own hands. He did not hesitate to 
assert this in the plainest terms. " I lay down 
My life, that I might take it again. No man 
taketh it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. 
I have power to lay it down, and I have power 
to take it again." x In the exercise of this 
sovereign control over His own life, and at the 
same time of a glad and ready obedience to His 

1 St. John x. 17-18. 



194 Holy Week — Tuesday. 

Father's will, He submitted Himself to the 
embrace of death, which otherwise could have 
had no power over Him at all. " He bowed 
His head and gave up the ghost." It was the 
bowed head that gave permission to the powers 
of death to advance and take His sacred Body 
into their grasp. The bowed head of our 
Saviour on the Cross is God's revelation to the 
world of the duty of implicit obedience to the 
divine will. 

2. But we must notice not only the willing- 
ness, but the completeness of our Blessed Lord's 
obedience. His submission and self-sacrifice 
knew no bounds. They were perfect at every 
point, and of limitless extent. He was obedient 
unto death, that is, even up to death. His 
obedience did not stop short of the utmost 
boundaries of His being; it included all His 
energies, and even the remotest event of His 
earthly ministry ; it extended even to the death 
of the Cross. In scope and depth it was 
infinite. 

3. Finally, let us remember that it was an 
effective obedience. It robbed death of its 
sting and deprived the grave of its victory. 
The sting of death is sin and the victory of the 
grave is corruption. But for Him who did no 
sin, neither was guile found in His mouth ; who 
had power to take His life again ; who was only 



Obedience Unto Death. 195 

resigning His body into the hands of death for 
a time, that He might fulfill all righteousness, 
the terrors of death were reduced to their lowest 
terms. It might sunder His body from His 
soul, but only during His pleasure. It might 
separate the Great Shepherd from His little 
flock, but only for a few days. It might seem 
to triumph over Him, but the real victory lay 
with Himself. His great glad act of obedience 
was destined to be the 

" Death of death, and hell's destruction." 

And so even in the hour of death His human 
soul was soothed and sustained by the con- 
sciousness of victory. 

Let us plant deeply in our hearts to-day the 
comforting assurance that by such obedience as 
His, we, too, may gain the mastery over death. 
When we have put ourselves entirely into the 
strong and loving hands of God, and determined 
to let His Will be done, we have conquered 
death. It cannot touch us until God wills, and 
even then it can have no real dominion over us. 
For the Son of Man has sovereign power over 
death, and has said of Himself, " I am He that 
liveth and was dead ; and behold I am alive for 
evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell 
and of death." I 

1 Rev. i. 18. 



HOLY WEEK. 

g#e (gtaef e?g £teer ©eat 0- 



WEDNESDAY. 
LOVE STRONGER THAN DEATH. 



" When Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should 
depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own 
which were in the world, He loved them unto the end." — St. 
John xiii. i. 

While we gather as devout learners round 
our Saviour's Cross, there is something else for 
us to do besides observing His sufferings. Let 
us try to-day to enter into the mind«of Christ, 
and learn how He was occupied upon the Cross. 
Let us strive to realize some of the thoughts 
which passed through His mind in those last 
hours of His ministry among men. The words 
spoken from the Cross will give us some insight 
into the thoughts of His heart and show us how 
our minds should be occupied in the hour of 
death. 



Love Stronger Than Death. 197 

Of whom, then, did our Lord think while He 
hung upon the Cross ? Were his thoughts turned 
in upon Himself ? He was the central figure in 
the world's history, on Him hung the destinies 
of the whole human race, He was engaged in a 
tremendous effort for the redemption of a lost 
world, He was the Mediator (and the only pos- 
sible mediator) between God and man. It 
would not have been strange if His thoughts 
had been centered upon Himself and wholly 
occupied with the great transaction in which He 
was engaged. 

But evidently it was not so. Throughout that 
Holy Week He had seemed to be always think- 
ing of others rather than Himself. Looking 
down from the brow of Olivet, He had wept 
over the Holy City which He loved. Led forth 
from the High Priest's Palace, He had rescued 
His perjured disciple by a look. Through all 
the weary hours when He had been dragged to 
and fro at the caprice of an unjust judge, He 
had borne Himself with a majestic dignity 
which seemed hardly conscious of self; He had 
seemed not to be absorbed in His sufferings, 
but in the thought of the souls whom He had 
come to save. As He crept feebly along the 
way of sorrows, sinking beneath the crushing 
burden of His Cross, He had spoken words of 
compassion for the daughters of Jerusalem. 



198 Holy Week — Wednesday. 

And now, as He hung upon the cruel Cross, His 
first and foremost thoughts were not for Him- 
self, but for His fellowmen. Let us trace them 
one by one as they are betrayed to us by His 
words. 

Close round the foot of the Cross is gathered 
a group of rude soldiery, busy with their ghastly 
work. They have crucified Him and now they 
are casting lots for His seamless robe. The first 
thought of the Divine Martyr is for them. His 
first words from the Cross are a prayer for His 
executioners. Looking down upon them with 
infinite tenderness, He breaks the awful silence 
with these blessed words : * ' Father, forgive 
them, for they know not what they do." x 

By His side upon another cross there hangs 
a thief. As this unhappy man looks into the 
face of death, he sees how vile he was. As he 
gazes with growing wonder at his Fellow-suf- 
ferer, and sees with what silent uncomplaining 
majesty He endures the Cross, some glimmer- 
ing intelligence of His sovereign power and 
Messiahship dawns upon his mind. His heart 
is flooded with a rush of penitence, and sympa- 
thy, and sublime faith. His lips falter this trem- 
bling prayer, * ' Lord, remember me when Thou 
comest into Thy kingdom. ,, Prompt and 
powerful is the reply : ' ' Verily I say unto thee, 

1 St. Luke xviii. 34. 



Love Stronger Than Death. 199 

to-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.' ' x 
Again we find our Lord thinking not of Him- 
self, but of the repentant robber by His side. 

Amidst the vast and restless crowd which 
surges round our Saviour's Cross there are many 
enemies, and but few friends. These last have 
pressed bravely forward and drawn as close as 
possible to the lonely Sufferer. They are watch- 
ing with Him to the bitter end. As He looks 
round Him, He sees His Beloved Disciple stand- 
ing near, with a familiar figure by his side. It 
is a woman, well stricken in years, and bowed 
with grief. It is His mother. The same faith- 
ful form which bent over the cradle of His 
human childhood has come to stand by the 
death-bed of His Cross. He turns upon her His 
eyes, half blinded by pain, and yet filled with 
unspeakable tenderness. She gazes back upon 
the bleeding, dying form of her Son. He 
knows full well what is passing in His mother's 
heart, and He has time, even in the midst of 
His great work for the salvation of a lost world, 
to turn aside and care for her. His next words 
from the Cross are words of divine thoughtf ul- 
ness, hallowing the ties of family and home. 
To His Beloved Disciple He gives this sacred, 
solemn charge : " Behold thy mother," and to His 
faithful mother this: "Woman, behold thy Son." 2 

1 St. Luke xxiii. 42, 43. 2 St. John xix. 26, 27 



200 Holy Week — Wednesday. 

And from that hour that disciple took her 
to his own home. Thus, in the time of His 
severest trial, we find Him caring with the ut- 
most tenderness for the pure and loving mother, 
who had followed Him through life and even 
unto death, transfiguring His Cross and Passion 
with the splendour of sublime unselfishness. 

Here then we have another great and precious 
lesson from the Cross. We find our Lord, even 
in the midst of His sharpest agony, when every 
word cost Him a pang of pain, when we might 
have expected to find His whole being absorbed 
in the tremendous struggle against sin and 
death, praying for His murderers, promising 
Paradise to a repentant thief, and providing 
His widowed mother with a home. It is the 
loftiest example of unselfish care for others 
which the world has ever seen. The loving 
face of Jesus looking down from the Cross, in 
pity upon his murderers, in pardon upon the 
penitent thief, and in fond affection on His 
mother and St. John, is the very incarnation of 
that perfect love which casteth out fear, yes, 
even the fear of death. Love is stronger than 
death. Death cannot quench nor kill it. Love 
lives after death, it reaches its perfection and 
finds its full fruition beyond the grave. Even 
in the hour of death perfect love can cast out 
all fear. The heart that beats warm with love 



Love Stronger Than Death. 201 

for God cannot be chilled by death's cold hand. 
The mind that is filled with loving thoughtful- 
ness for its friends and fellowmen, busied with 
care for their highest interests, has no room 
left in it for the fear of death. Like the soul of 
our dying Lord, it finds strength and peace in 
loving " its own unto the end." 

Let us then take home this lesson to our 
hearts. Love is stronger than death. It tri- 
umphs over death and takes away its sting. 
When we have filled our hearts full of love to 
God and love to man we can smile serenely into 
the face of death. In the power of a self-for- 
getting, undying love we can look with un- 
shaken confidence through the shadows of death 
to the life beyond the grave. 

" For then shall break eternal day, 
And breathe from far life-giving air, 
And life be Love, and Death be dead." 



HOLY WEEK. 
£0e (gta0f erg <£)t>er ®eaf #♦ 



MAUNDY THURSDAY. 

THE BLESSING OF A FINISHED LIFE. 



" It is finished." — St. John xix. jo. 

Our Blessed Lord still hangs upon the Cross, 
but His sufferings are drawing to a close. The 
bitter cry of loneliness is hushed, and the mys- 
terious darkness has given way to light. The 
sacred life is closing now, is even at an end. 
The parched lips and burning tongue of the 
Great Sufferer have but one word to speak to us. 
It is the mightiest and most meaningful word 
ever spoken by the tongue of man, for it an- 
nounces the salvation of a lost world. 

" It is finished. ,, How various are the mean- 
ings which it bears to those who hear its solemn 
sound. 

i. To the enemies of the Crucified it speaks 
of victory won. He who has so long defied 



The Blessing of a Finished Life. 203 

and baffled them is in their grasp at last. He 
who has saved others cannot save Himself. 
They see Him dying now, dying a death of 
shame. God has not interfered to save Him 
nor to punish them. They have utterly de- 
stroyed Him from off the face of the earth. 

2. To the few faithful friends who watch 
timidly beside His Cross, the words sound 
like the knell of hope. "It is finished.' ' All 
is over now. He whom they had trusted as the 
Redeemer of Israel is dying now. As they 
gaze upon His tired bleeding form, one by one 
their fondest hopes are falling dead. Never 
again shall they walk and talk with Him by sil- 
very lake, or in the garden, or on the lonely 
mountain-side. Scattered and humbled, all 
their high hopes gone, they will seek their homes 
again, and wait for another Christ. Such are 
their coward thoughts. So little have they 
learned to know of what His life and death 
should be. 

3. But for Himself, how full of joy and 
satisfaction is the word. To His weary body 
and heavy laden soul, how glad must be the 
sound. After the storm and strain through 
which He has struggled on to the end, how 
sweet must be the promised rest. How com- 
plete, how glorious, is the triumph opened up 
to the eye of faith by that word of power. 



204 Holy Week — Maundy Thursday. 

" i It is finished.' O ! what pleasure 
Do the precious words afford ! 
Heavenly blessings without measure 
Flow to us from Christ the Lord. 

* It is finished ! ' 
Saints, the dying word record. 

Finished all the types and shadows 
Of the ceremonial law ; 
Finished all that God has promised ; 
Death and hell no more shall awe. 

< It is finished ! ' 
Saints, from hence your comfort draw." 

This word of our Lord from the Cross is The 
Toiler's Cry of Triumph. God has given Him 
a great work to do — a double work: to make 
known God to men, and to bring men back 
to God. To accomplish this tremendous task 
has been the master-purpose of His earthly- 
life. By the well of Sychar He declared, " My 
meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and 
to finish His work." J Every energy of His 
being, every moment of His time, has been 
devoted to that work. Since the first glad day 
when He began to be about His Father's busi- 
ness, He has toiled day and night and taken no 
rest. And now the great work of atonement 
is done. The patient life of toil, the long 
nights of fervent prayer, the weary journeys 
over land and sea, the desperate struggles with 

i St. John iv. 34. 



The Blessing of a Finished Life. 205 

the powers of sin are at an end. " Father, the 
hour is come. I have glorified Thee on the 
earth, I have finished the work which Thou 
gavest Me to do. I have manifested Thy name 
unto the men which Thou gavest Me out of the 
world. And now, I am no more in the world, but 
these are in the world, and I come to Thee." ■ 

This word is also the Sufferer's Cry of Relief. 
The work which our Blessed Lord had under- 
taken to do in the world could not be accom- 
plished without intense suffering. No great 
and good work can. Nor can there be any 
full-grown character which is not matured by 
suffering. But now the life of patient endur- 
ance which began in the manger of Bethlehem, 
and deepened into the mystery of the Passion, 
has culminated in the awful agony of the Cross. 
"It is finished." All that the Scriptures fore- 
told of the Man of Sorrows has been fulfilled. 
The powers of hell have done their worst. 
The bitter cup of suffering has been drained 
to the dregs. The full, perfect, and sufficient 
sacrifice has been made. To the aching limbs > 
the bleeding hands, the broken heart, the tor- 
tured soul, relief has come at last. The Chief 
Sufferer is entering into His rest. 

"It is finished." Sometime these words 
will be said of our life in this world. They 

1 St. John xvii. I, 4, 6, II. 



206 Holy Week — Maundy Thursday. 

will mean a great deal to us- God's calls ended, 
our opportunities gone, our probation past, our 
lifework stopped, our gifts of grace consumed, 
our last communion made, our last word 
spoken, the last scene of life closed. Our 
friends will reverently lower our mortal body 
into its last resting-place and pass their verdict 
upon our life. What will they be able to say 
of us in that day? Can they say that our work 
is done, that we have finished the work which 
God gave us to do? Or will they say, " It is 
such a pity, so sad, such an unfinished life, cut 
off before it began to bear fruit, so much left 
undone which ought to have been done?" 
What shall we ourselves be able to say of our 
life in that day when we are called upon to 
give it back to God? He has entrusted it to 
us, not simply that we may keep it for Him or 
use it for ourselves, but that we may use it for 
Him. He has given us a work to do in this 
world, a definite work, wisely chosen for us by 
Him, and which we alone can do. He has 
appointed certain trials for us to bear, certain 
temptations for us to meet and overcome. 
Upon our accomplishment of this God-given 
task depends our eternal destiny. To finish it 
is to fulfill the chief end of our being, to make 
a success of life, to gratify God and win 
Heaven for ourselves. To leave it undone is 



The Blessing of a Finished Life. 207 

to squander the most splendid opportunities, 
prove ourselves unfaithful to a sacred trust, 
grieve our good God, and risk all our hopes 
of happiness. When we have finished our 
work we can go hence without fear, for we 
know that henceforth ' ' there is laid up for us 
a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the 
righteous judge, shall give." x Death is shorn 
of one of its chief terrors, the fear of an 
offended God. He who can lay down his 
lifework at the feet of God and say, "It is 
finished,' ' need not be afraid of death. 

Let us set ourselves anew to-day to strive 
after a finished life ; a life full of deeds of faith, 
and love, and Christian kindliness ; full perhaps 
of toil and trial, but done bravely to the end. 
Let us resolve to find out what is the special 
work which God has given us to do and bend 
all our energies to finish it. 

1 II. St. Timothy iv. 8. 



HOLY WEEK. 
tfc ®torf erg <&t>er <£>ea#. 



GOOD FRIDAY. 

THE SURRENDER OF THE SOUL. 



And when Jesus had cried with a loud voice, He said, 
Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit ; and having said 
this, he gave up the ghost. — St. Luke xxiiu 46. 

We are to listen to-day to the last words of 
our Saviour from the Cross, and are to learn 
from them our final lesson how to die. There 
is no weakness nor wavering now. With a 
voice firm, and clear, and strong, the Divine 
Martyr speaks. Full of serene faith and kingly 
power are His words. They place His soul 
forever beyond the reach of death. "Father, 
into Thy hands I commend My spirit. ,, The 
body hangs upon the Cross, but the sacred head 
is bowed in token of a willing surrender to the 
powers of death. The marks of the long strife 
are there, the wounds are open, and the thorns 
still pierce the pallid brow. But the mangled 



The Surrender of the Soul. 209 

hands and feet feel no more pain, the pulse is 
still, the broken heart has ceased to throb, the 
closed eyes no longer see the staring crowd, the 
tired body is at rest. The soul, too, is free. 
Far from the scorn of men and free from satan's 
power, it lies in the arms of God. No more of 
shame and grief and loneliness for it, but rest 
and peace and glory by the great white throne. 
A few hours of rest in Paradise, a few days of 
lingering on this earth again, and then — "for- 
ever with the Lord." 

Notice the superb sense of power with which 
our Saviour surrenders His soul into His Father's 
hands. It is not rent from Him against His 
will by the powers of death. He plucks it away 
out of those hostile hands and commits it to His 
Father's care. The soldiers have never seen a 
victim of the cross die in so short a time. 
Those who hang by His side will live on till 
death comes to their release. But He dies by 
His own free act. No power in Heaven or 
earth constrains Him to lay down His life. Of 
His own free will He lays it in His Father's 
hands. He deposits it in a safe place, from 
whence, after the crisis of death is past, in the 
bright dawn of the first Easter Day, it shall be 
restored to Him. He seems to say within Him- 
self, ''I know whom I have believed, and am 
persuaded that He is able to keep that which j 



2io Holy Week — Good Friday. 

have committed to Him against that day." x 
And so, in the exercise of resistless power, He 
removes His soul out of the reach of all the 
enemies by whom it is beset, into the shelter 
and safe-keeping of His Father's House. And 
thus He robs the powers of darkness of their 
prey. 

Our dying Saviour teaches us how to die; 
when all is finished, giving up our souls gladly 
and fearlessly into the embrace of God, "as 
into the hands of a faithful Creator and most 
merciful Saviour." We need fear no evil. 
"There shall no torment touch them. In the 
sight of the unwise they seemed to die, and 
their departure is taken for misery, and their 
going from us to be utter destruction, but they 
are in peace." 2 The Christian soul at death 
goes not out into the dark, nor into the grasp 
of remorseless enemies. It passes into the 
strong and loving hands of God. By commend- 
ing it to Him we can place it far above, out of 
the reach of harm. The surrender of the soul 
to God overcomes much of the sharpness of 
death, and converts the victory of the grave 
into defeat. It emancipates our higher, truer, 
real self from the obedience of death. When 
our Blessed Lord had commended His spirit 
into His Father's hands He was willing, ready, 
i II. St. Timothy, i. 12. 2 Wisdom iii. 1-3. 



The Surrender of the Soul. 2 1 1 

yes, anxious to die. Even so the Christian 
who has surrendered his soul, is ready to go 
Home to God. He knows that for Him to 
depart and be with Christ is far better than to 
linger here, and He obeys his Master's call with 
joy. 

To the Christian, then, it is not a fearful 
thing to fall into the hands of the Living God. 
To him whom it finds following Christ in the 
Way of the Cross, death means freedom from 
toil, and pain, and sin. It means to be with 
Christ, "to feel, to see Him near." It means 
to be with " all the saints who from their 
labours rest." It means unbroken peace and 
safety for the soul. It means that all the shad- 
ows which sin and death have flung across the 
pathway of life have fled away, and the sweet 
old prophecy is coming true — "At evening 
time it shall be light." x As the awful darkness 
rolled away, and the light of the Father's coun- 
tenance shone on the closing scene of the Sac- 
rifice of the Cross, so every surrender of a soul 
to God at death lets in a flood of glory, as the 
" day breaks and the shadows flee^away." How 
many a faithful pastor, standing beside the 
death-bed of a Christian soul and commending 
it to God, has seen the light of Paradise 
break in upon the soul and drive away all fear 

i Zechariah xiv. 7. 



2 1 2 Holy Week — Good Friday. 

of death. How many an one has witnessed the 
fulfillment of God's precious promise to the 
soul, " I will ransom thee from the power of the 
grave, I will redeem thee from death. O death, 
I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy 
destruction/' T 

When our Lord commends His soul into 
His Father's hands, He teaches us how to die. 
But He teaches us at the same time how to live. 
If we would die the death of the righteous, we 
must live the life of the righteous. If we would 
commend our souls to God in death, we must 
commend them to Him now in the time of this 
mortal life. We must be faithful, true, and 
obedient followers of His life, if we would have 
our last end like His. Being closely united to 
Him, He will be our hope and stay in life and 
in death. Then, "whether we live, we live 
unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die 
unto the Lord; whether we live, therefore, or 
die, we are the Lord's." 2 

"Father, into Thy hands I commend My 
spirit." These have been the last words of a 
multitude of God's saints. Borrowing them 
from their Lord, they have made them their 
own dying words. Hallowed by the use of our 
Blessed Lord and of hundreds of His most faith- 
ful followers, they are the best of all words in 

* Hosea xiii. 14. 2 Romans xiv. 8. 



The Surrender of the Soul. 213 

which to surrender up the soul to God. Let us 
resolve to-day that, if possible, they shall be our 
own last words in this world. Let us take them 
to ourselves, and treasure them up in our hearts, 
and use them often while we live, and have 
them ready when we die. 



HOLY WEEK. 

£0e (gtasf erg (Duet ©eat 0. 



EASTER EVEN. 
AFTER DEATH. 



" Verily I say unto thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in 
Paradise." — St. Luke xxiii. 43. 

It is the Great Sabbath of the Passover. An 
unbroken calm broods over the Holy City, with 
its multitudes of pilgrim worshippers; over 
Calvary, with its empty crosses and trampled 
summit, and all its pathetic signs of recent 
tragedy; over Joseph's garden with its new- 
made sepulchre and guard of Roman soldiery. 
Within the rock-hewn chamber of death, the 
sacred form now rests in peace. How sweet 
and blessed is its rest ! Yesterday dragged along 
the way of sorrows, nailed to the cruel Cross, 
held up to the scorn of men, pierced with the 
sharp thrust of the spear ; now laid by loving 
hands in the silence and seclusion of the tomb, 
with angels standing by, at rest. The little 
band of faithful followers have this to comfort 



After Death. 2 1 5 

them, even in their despair, — the lifeless 
body of their Lord is theirs again, and is be- 
yond the reach of harm. They have laid it 
with reverential tenderness, ''Where the 
wicked cease from troubling, and the weary be 
at rest." x 

But where is the soul of Jesus during this 
calm day ? It left the tired body hanging on the 
Cross, and passed into the protecting hands of 
God. It entered the place of departed spirits, 
that vast waiting place of human souls, where 
all who have ever drawn the breath of life 
await the coming of the great Judgment Day. 
To those who have known and loved God, it is 
a home of rest, and peace, and growing near- 
ness to their Lord. To him " who hath trodden 
under foot the Son of God, and hath counted 
the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was 
sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done des- 
pite unto the spirit of grace," to such as have 
deliberately and defiantly rejected Him, it is a 
state of unrest, "a fearful looking for of judg- 
ment." 2 In this border-land of Eternity, in 
that happy part of it which He describes as 
Paradise, His human soul awaits the Resur- 
rection Day. 

The most triumphant, kingly promise which 
He ever made was that with which amidst the 

1 Job iii. 17. aHebrews x. 27, 29. 



216 Holy Week — Easter Even. 

shame and suffering of the Cross He gladdened 
the heart of the penitent thief. " To-day shalt 
thou be with Me in Paradise." Above the 
hoarse clamour of the mob, in face of all the 
remorseless powers which were dragging Him 
down to the grave, out of the black shadows of 
impending death, ring out the clear tones of 
that .splendid promise, which only divine power 
could execute. It was the death sentence of 
death itself. Jesus Christ on the Cross, face to 
face with death, feeling its cold hand upon 
Him, and painfully conscious of its power over 
Him, felt also His power over it, knew that it 
could not hurt His soul, and spoke with serene 
confidence of His life in Paradise after death. 
And more than that, He promised the same 
blessed life to His fellow-sufferer. That prom- 
ise did not fail. The soul of the Convert of the 
Cross is with that of his new-found Lord in 
Paradise. 

Think what Easter Even is to the penitent 
thief. By virtue of those kingly words he is 
with all those holy souls who have loved God 
and whom God loves. He has gone out of the 
visible into the invisible, apart forever from the 
tumults and strifes and troubles of this unquiet 
world, into the rest and peace and security of 
Paradise. And what is his highest happiness 
there? Is it not told us fully in these words of 



After Death. 2 1 7 

our Lord: " To-day shalt thou be with Me in 
Paradise ? " To be with Christ is the highest 
height of human happiness, is the best thing 
God has to give. The thief timidly asked a 
place in the remembrance of his Lord, and is 
given a place at His side. Thus God ever 
gives more than we desire or deserve, and 
His best and sweetest gift is to be with Christ. 
The Beloved Disciple never tires of telling us 
how he leaned on his Master's breast at the 
Eucharist, but how much better to be with 
Him in Paradise. 

Our Lord's promise from the Cross is not 
limited in its scope. If we will have it, it 
extends to and includes us. We can make it 
a blessed reality for ourselves. If we take 
Him for our Lord, death will only be to us 
the door into Paradise, the breaking down of 
all barriers between us and Him. Where is 
the sting of death and the victory of the grave, 
if we can hear ringing out through the gather- 
ing shadows those cheering words, "To-day 
shalt thou be with Me in Paradise? " It is the 
voice of the Master crying aloud to us, " Come 
forth with joy, O Christian soul. Come apart 
from the body, away from the misery of a sin- 
ful world, beyond all reach of harm, into the 
audience chamber of the Great King. I say no 
longer, whither I go, ye cannot come. I will 



218 Holy Week — Easter Even. 

show thee the path of life. In My presence is 
the fulness of joy, and at My right hand there 
is pleasure for evermore. Enter thou into the 
joy of thy Lord." 

Our Lenten meditations are drawing to a 
close. The end of them is at hand. We have 
tried to draw nigh to God, and we may be assured 
that He has drawn nigh to us > even though we 
knew it not. He is not far from any of us now, 
if we will but feel after Him and find Him. 
Let us keep close to Him after Lent is gone, 
and cherish the lessons He has taught us in 
these forty days. Our striving for the mastery 
is but just begun. Let us try to continue it 
according to the pattern given us by St. Paul, 
and shown us on Mount Calvary. 

There is nothing in this world better and 
sweeter than a well-kept Lent. Let us offer 
up ours, such as it is, to God. If we feel that 
it has been kept very feebly, very imperfectly, 
let us still offer it up to Him, confessing that 
we are at best but unprofitable servants, and 
beseeching Him to have compassion upon our 
infirmities, and that those things which in our 
unworthiness we dare not, or in our blindness 
cannot ask, He may vouchsafe to give us for 
the sake of His Son. 

May our Incarnate and Risen Lord grant us 
a bright and blessed Easter-tide. May His 



After Death. 219 

Presence be with us, making itself known to us 
in the Breaking of Bread, causing our hearts to 
burn within us while we commune with Him, 
and abiding with us till the day is far spent, 
and the evening of life is at hand. Then may 
He mercifully grant that " through the grave 
and gate of death we may pass to our joyful 
resurrection; for His merits, who died, and was 
buried, and rose again for us." 



A SELECTED LIST 
OF THEOLOGICAL BOOKS 

PUBLISHED BY 

LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., NEW YORK 

REV. ALFRED G. MORTIMER, D.D. 

The Seven Last Words of Our Most Holy Redeemer. With Medi- 
tations on Some Scenes in His Passion. By the Rev. Alfred G. Mor- 
timer, D.D., Rector of St. Mark's, Philadelphia. i2mo. $1.00 

Contents : Meditations on the Passion — I. The Scourging of our Blessed Lord 
—II. The Mockery of our Blessed Lord— III. The Presentation of our Blessed 
Lord to the People— IV. The Cross-bearing of our Blessed Lord— V. The Pierc- 
ing of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ — VI. The Uplifting of the Cross of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 

The Three Hours 1 Agony of our Lord Jesus Christ— Introductory Address 
—The First Word— The Second Word— The Third Word— The Fourth W T ord— 
The Fifth Word— The Sixth Word— The Seventh Word. 

" The Meditations in this volume were given last Lent (1895) in St. Mark's, 
Philadelphia, at noon on Fridays. Though complete in themselves, they are really 
a continuation of a course on the Passion of our Blessed Lord which had been de- 
livered in St. Mark's the previous Lent. In the latter course the Passion had 
been treated as witnessing as a whole to certain moral virtues. In the present 
series a few scenes in the Passion have been taken in relation to the individual 
soul. The Addresses on the Seven Last Words were given in the same church at 
the Three Hours' Service on Good Friday, 1895. Together they form a consecu- 
tive series of Meditations for Holy Week or for the Fridays in Lent." — Extract 
from Preface. 

BISHOP A. C. A. HALL. 

The Virgin Mother. Retreat Addresses on the Life of the Blessed; 
Virgin Mary, as Told in the Gospels. With an Appended Essav on 
the Virgin Birth of Our Lord. By the Rt. Rev. A. C. A. Hall, D.D., 

Bishop of Vermont. i2mo. 81,25 

11 It is often said, and the saying is true, that Protestantism and Anglicanism 
have lost something of sweet Christian tenderness in their extreme reaction from 
the semi-idolatrous cultus of the Blessed Virgin which prevailed in the Middle 
Ages. We have not the slightest tendency to that form of doctrinal aberration ; 
nor would it be possible, we suppose, for any clear-minded Englishman or Ameri- 
can to join in the glowing but hyperbolical addresses to the Mother of our Lord 
which are found in the liturgies of Oriental Churches ; yet it does seem that some- 
thing has been lost in our habitual forgetfulness of the human being to whom our 
blessed Lord in His earthly life was nearest and dearest, and who, doubtless, of 
all the sons and daughters of men, was— nay, perhaps still is— nearest and dear- 
est to Him. In this little volume. Bishop Hall very admirablv and delicately dis- 
courses of the Blessed Virgin with the reverent affection which is due to her. and 
yet without the slightest approach to the extravagances which our Church has 
rightly and wisely banished. In a brief appendix he has written a few timely 
words on the subject of the virgin birth of our Lord, considered as an article of 
the Christian faith. "— The Church Standard. Philadelphia. 



LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 1 S PUBLICATIONS. 



AIDS TO THE INNER LIFE. Edited by the Rev. W. H. Hutch- 
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The Christian Year. Thoughts in Verse for the Sundays and Holy 
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The Hidden Life of the Soul. From the French of Jean Nicolas 
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Uniform with the above : 

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The Spiritual Letters of St. Francis de Sales. 

AVANCINI. Vita et Doctrina Jesu Christi. Ex Quatuor Evan- 
gelistis collecta et in Meditationum Materiam ad Singulos totius Anni 
Dies distributa. Per N. Avancinum, S. J. Ad usum Cleri Anglicani 
accommodavit Presbyter Ignotus. Editio Secunda. i8mo. $1.00 

" Besides its original purpose as a help to meditation, Avancini would make a 
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— Guardian. 

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LONGMANS, GREEN, dr= CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

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Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. By the Rev. R. M. Benson, M.A., 
Student of Christ Church, Oxford. i2mo, cloth. 

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THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES, 1894. 

The Permanent Value of the Book of Genesis as an 

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THE BISHOP PADDOCK LECTURES, i8g2. 

The Sacramental System Considered as the Extension 
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Rector of Trinity Church, New York. Crown 8vo, 260 
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—The Living Church. 

" It is most gratifying to have Dr. Dix's lectures on the sacramental system in 
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religious literature, not of the day only, but of the age. . . . The logical arrange- 
ment of the material is admirable, and the diction at once stately and precise." 

— St. Andrew's Cross. 



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